The recent announcement from the Prime Minister and Minister of Education has seen some strong voices come out regarding the use of information.

There was an announcement last week from the Prime Minister about the decline of Year 8 maths achievement recently. The announcement stated that 22% of year 8 students were achieving at or above the curriculum expectation.

This was followed up by discussion in the media about the way this figure was put together and the data used. Accuracy is important in maths after all!

Without being defensive it must be acknowledged that this data was formulated from a very small sample size in (42 schools and 833 children) based on assessments against the newly refreshed curriculum which is still in draft form and has a different metric. The students hadn’t been taught from this curriculum.

There was other data that the PM could have used which would have been a better representation to Y8 maths achievement. The most accurate tool for countrywide assessment is NMMSA which assesses a bigger sample size from a mix of schools. This was last done for Maths in 2022. (Our school was actually part of this study). The NMMSA report showed there was little to no decline in Y8 maths achievement from 2013 to 2022.

PISA is often held up as measure of achievement analysis as it ranks our students against their peers across the OECD nations. In Maths, NZ ranks in the top quarter of these countries and the last findings stated - “After several cycles of stable performance, Aotearoa New Zealand's mean mathematics score dropped 15 points, from 494 in 2018 to 479 in 2022."

The OECD mean also dropped by 15 points over the same time period, meaning Aotearoa New Zealand's mean score continues to be higher.

What I would like to say is that we would all love all children to be achieving at the right level.

Is there more work to be done - yes! Would we like more resourcing for professional learning - always!

Like all curriculum areas, for some tamariki they find maths easier to grasp than others. We frequently hear from parents that they struggled at school with maths in ‘their day’...so things haven't changed in that area.

Having said all of the above I can only focus on Rangiora Borough School and our data. Our 2024 baseline data for our whole school shows that we do have improvement to make, but we are aware of individual needs for both support and extension.

We have been working on a Maths contract for the last two years, with a mastery approach lens. We have just been accepted for our third year to continue in 2025 working within this Math Cluster. This professional learning aligns with that which is accredited for delivery next year.