Introduction

One of the foundations of a healthy education system is the ability to change, adapt and improve over time. Doing this effectively involves gauging how well students are learning, and evaluating teacher practices and school outcomes. By collecting reliable data on these factors, educators can work in partnership with students and whānau to determine how to best meet students’ needs so that they reach their goals and aspirations. At the same time, educators should work to improve educational quality and monitor how well they are responding to the needs of students. But the evaluation process itself should also be subject to evaluation to ensure that measurement practices appropriately monitor progress towards these goals.

Key results

• Assessment was used in New Zealand for a range of purposes related to educational development, and these were equally employed in socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged schools.
• A greater share of New Zealand students attended schools that used achievement data for accountability purposes compared to the OECD average.
• More than 90% of New Zealand students attended schools that engaged in 8 of the 10 quality assurance and improvement actions examined in PISA 2018.
• Across all PISA participating countries, many of the assessment, accountability, and quality assurance practices were associated with lower reading scores, but New Zealand’s mean score was higher than would be expected given these metrics.