Executive Summary

Building on the two summary reports released at the end of 2004, this report presents achievement results for some key groups of New Zealand students. The report is divided into three main sections. The first section presents an overview of TIMSS ; the second section first sets the scene with a review of the mathematics achievement results for New Zealand students as a whole, followed by the achievement results for some of New Zealand 's sub-groups. Following the same outline for mathematics, the third section looks at achievement in science. The main focus of this summary is on changes in mathematics and science achievement for both New Zealand 's Year 5 and Year 9 students over the eight-year period from when the first cycle of TIMSS was undertaken in 1994-1995.

Key Findings

Mathematics

Year 5

• Significant increases in Māori, Pasifika, and Pakeha/European students' mathematics achievement were evident from 1994 to 2002.¹ Of note were the increases in Māori and Pasifika boys' mean mathematics achievement.
• The mean achievement of students who often spoke English at home and of those who rarely did increased steadily from 1994 to 2002. Moreover, there was a moderate decrease in the difference between their mean mathematics achievement scores over this period.

Year 9

• There were no significant changes in students' mathematics achievement in the four main ethnic groupings. However, a shift in the relative performance among the groupings was evident with Asian students, on average, outperforming all other students in 2002.
• Students who rarely spoke English in the home in 2002 were, on average, achieving as well as their counterparts who often spoke English in the home; in 1994 this group, on average, achieved significantly lower scores.

Science

Year 5

• Significant increases in Māori, Pasifika, and Asian students' science achievement were evident from 1994 to 2002. In particular, the increases in Māori and Pasifika boys' mean science achievement.
• The mean science achievement of students who rarely spoke English at home, and to a lesser extent those who often spoke English, increased steadily from 1994 to 2002. Furthermore, a small decrease in the difference between their mean science achievement scores was also observed over this period.

Year 9

• Asian and Pasifika students' mean science achievement increased significantly from 1994 to 2002. Of note, the increases for girls in these two groupings, as well as for Pakeha/European girls. In addition, proportionately fewer students in each of the four main ethnic groupings were achieving very low scores in 2002 than in 1994.
• The mean achievement of students who rarely spoke English in the home increased significantly from 1994 to 2002. Consequently, the difference in the mean achievement for this group and for those students who often spoke English decreased markedly over the eight-year period.

Footnote

1. The use of significance: refers to the statistical significance at the 0.05 level.