National Standards data now online

Education Minister Hekia Parata says National Standards data published for the first time today on the Ministry of Education’s Education Counts website is a significant step forward in helping build the reading, writing and math skills of young learners.

“Our Government introduced National Standards to raise achievement, to identify children who are falling behind, to help parents help their children, and help schools to focus on what they need to do,’’ says Ms Parata.

“The information gained from this first set of National Standards data is powerful for identifying and providing support for all learners.’’ 

The data will be published in the format that schools’ submitted it.

Ms Parata says for parents to get a complete picture of their child’s school they need to look at schools’ ERO and annual reports - also available on the education counts website. They also need to talk to principals, teachers, schools trustees and other parents. 

“Schools have put considerable effort into their reporting and I’d like to thank them for the work they’ve done. We have a five year plan to improve the quality of the data and the Ministry of Education is working hard with schools to achieve that.” Ms Parata says a key reason the Government wants schools’ information out in the public domain is to get parents, family, whānau and schools talking with each other about how their children are doing and how to improve their learning.  “The data shows that 76 per cent of Year 1-8 learners reached or exceeded the national standard for reading, 72 per cent of learners for mathematics, and 68 per cent for writing.   But crucially around 30 per cent of learners are not doing so well.

“We can see where there are children at primary and intermediate schools needing additional support and the Ministry of Education will target resources to those learners in order that they too can succeed.

“Up until now we’ve had to rely only on NCEA data – at the end of compulsory schooling – to provide us with a picture of our education system. National Standards data will now allow us to support all learners and target those who are behind much earlier and give them the help they need.’’ National Standards data is available online at www.educationcounts.govt.nz \

Note  2,087 schools were required to report against the National Standards.  Of these schools, 188 have either not yet submitted data or their data is incomplete.