Does the Minister agree with the Ministry of Education regarding Year 8 students meeting curriculum expectations that "assessments at Year 8 confirmed that student performance has not changed from 2022 to 2023, but rather the curriculum expectation has changed with the refresh." and "There was no statistically significant change in the average score between 2019 and 2024 at Year 8, indicating stable performance over time."?

Answer

Yes. While international results show decline over decades, in recent time, our national results have remained steady. While steady, the results are very poor. The last results for NMSSA showed the proportion of Year 8 students meeting curriculum expectations was: - 42% maths (2022) - 35% writing (2019) - 56% reading (2019) The Curriculum Insights and Progress Study replaced NMSSA in 2023. A benchmark exercise was undertaken for the new refreshed curriculum and showed that when a more internationally comparable curriculum was assessed against, our results were far lower. The latest Curriculum Insights results from 2025 show the proportion of Year 8 students meeting curriculum expectations is: - 24% maths - 28% writing - 45% reading So while the results were stable, they were low, and concerningly, far behind comparable countries. Our reforms and action plans, based on the science of learning are designed to raise achievement and increase the number of students at curriculum expectations.