NZ Education

I’m not going to enter into the standards debate..... However this data is something to be proud of

PISA 2006 (at age 15 - 57 countries)

Mathematics literacy:
New Zealand score unchanged from the 2003 and 2000 assessments
Five countries higher than NZ (Chinese Taipei, Finland, Hong Kong-China, Korea, Netherlands)
NZ indistinguishable from Switzerland, Canada, Japan, Belgium, Australia (and others)
NZ well ahead of UK and USA
NZ had 14% at Level 1 proficiency or lower, compared to OECD average of 21%
Reading literacy:
New Zealand score unchanged from the 2003 and 2000 assessments
Three countries higher than NZ (Korea, Finland, Hong Kong-China)
NZ indistinguishable from Canada, Ireland (and others)
NZ ahead of Australia, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Japan, UK, Austria, Germany, France, Norway…
NZ had 15% at Level 1 proficiency or lower, similar to Australia at 13%, compared to OECD average of 20%
Scientific literacy:
New Zealand score unchanged from the 2003 and 2000 assessments
Two countries higher than NZ (Finland & Hong Kong-China)
NZ indistinguishable from Canada, Chinese Taipei, Japan, Australia, Netherlands, Korea (and others)
NZ ahead of 46 countries, including UK and USA
NZ had 14% at Level 1 proficiency or lower, similar to Australia at 13%, compared to OECD average of 19%
TIMMS 2006 (for Year 5 students)
NZ mathematics score unchanged from 2002, improved from 1994
NZ science score decreased from 2002 but unchanged from 1994

PIRLS 2006
NZ reading literacy score unchanged from 2001 (no earlier comparison on same metric)
NEMP 1995 to 2008 (Years 4 and 8 in 15 curriculum areas)
Remarkable consistency in performance. No clear trends, with occasional fluctuations.