About Curriculum Insights

Our mahi

Curriculum Insights is a large-scale assessment study that monitors trends in student achievement. We visit around 160 schools and work with more than 6,000 students each year to build a reliable picture of achievement across the country in English-medium, state and state-integrated schools. The information we provide is used by government, schools and teachers to improve education.

Our work is important for Aotearoa because we track students' progress in the New Zealand Curriculum and generate insights that drive improvements. Our reports complement results from international studies of achievement. We:

• identify and monitor trends in educational performance
• explore impacts on student achievement
• develop insights that can be used to enable and support system improvement
• provide dependable information to policy makers and curriculum specialists for planning
• give schools information to help improve teaching and learning.

The study is a collaboration between the University of Otago and the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, conducted on contract to the Ministry of Education.

It is the latest version of the long-standing National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement, and National Education Monitoring Project before that, designed specifically to understand student achievement and how teaching practice – and the education sector more widely – can evolve to support continued progress.

How Curriculum Insights works

The study has three components: school visits, online assessments, and a research panel of schools.

The school visit component of the study focuses on the eight learning areas of the New Zealand Curriculum, assessing two areas each year. It collects information from students in Years 3, 6, and 8, reflecting the refreshed learning phases of the curriculum. Trained Kaiako Rangahau | Teacher Researchers visit a representative sample of schools nationwide to administer rich assessment tasks and gather achievement data. These tasks and interviews are designed to capture a comprehensive view of the student, including their learning, context, and culture.

The study uses online assessments to tracks student progress in reading, writing, and maths. It involves annual online assessments for Years 3, 6, and 8, administered by classroom teachers in participating schools. This component follows the progress of year-level cohorts as they advance through the education system, providing national data on progress and achievement in reading, writing, and maths.

The study’s research panel of schools enhances the study's explanatory power and offers opportunities to develop and pilot innovative research tools. The panel includes 40 schools, broadly representative of schools nationwide, which provide valuable data over several years. This component enables the study to be responsive and agile, offering feedback on key aspects of the New Zealand Curriculum and student achievement.

Our approach

We design and trial authentic, engaging, and effective assessment tasks.
Our task development teams work closely with teachers and curriculum specialists to create rich assessment tasks. The tasks enable students to show what they know, understand, and can do, in the learning areas of the New Zealand Curriculum.

We use many approaches to gather assessment data. These include:

• rich curriculum tasks
• computer-based tasks
• pencil and paper assessments
• collaborative activities
• performance activities
• one-to-one and small group interviews
• questionnaires
• online assessments, some of which are computer-adaptive.

We design interesting tasks that provide relevant, rich information. Students enjoy the tasks we create.

We gather a representative sample of schools and students.
We work in English-medium state and integrated schools across New Zealand each year. We assess the achievement of Year 3, Year 6, and Year 8 students.

We collect dependable achievement data.
Curriculum Insights Trained Kaiako Rangahau | Teacher Researchers travel from school to school in Term 3 each year to collect achievement data. They visit two schools each week to implement the assessment programme. Prior to starting as researchers, the Kaiako Rangahau attend a five-day training programme to learn procedures that ensure the assessments are delivered consistently.

Teams of teachers mark the student responses. Our curriculum experts facilitate the marking and strict moderation processes are in place.

We recruit and work with up to 60 practising teachers each year. They contribute to most areas of the Curriculum Insights programme and we really value their involvement.

We generate a range of reports and resources to improve education.
Each year we publish a range of reports. These include:

• Dashboard reports: These provide an overview of national achievement data, offering clear insights into student performance in specific areas of learning at particular year levels.
• Data windows: Online interactive tools that offer detailed student achievement information, broken down by demographic subgroups such as gender, ethnicity, and equity index.
• Insights for Teachers: These highlight students' strengths and areas for improvement, offering practical suggestions to enhance teaching practices.
• Exemplars: Showcasing the tasks our researchers use with ākonga, along with annotated student responses, the exemplars help teachers understand the demands of the end-of-phase progress outcomes in the curriculum.
• Contextual insights reports: Providing information about teaching and learning from student, teacher, and school leader questionnaires, these reports explore the links between student and school-level variables and overall achievement and progress.
• Technical reports: These describe our sampling, methodology, and analysis procedures, including the evaluative frameworks that underpin our assessment programs.

Our foundations

Curriculum Insights was launched in 2023 to support the updated New Zealand Curriculum. It builds on the legacy of the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement (2011-2022) and the National Education Monitoring Project (1995-2010). All three studies have been based at the University of Otago, with NZCER joining the partnership in 2012 for the NMSSA study.

Our work is guided by a core set of principles:

Grounded in the diverse identities, languages and cultures of Aotearoa
We honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi and work towards an equitable schooling system for all. We celebrate and plan for the diversity of all learners in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Generating trustworthy information for improvement
Our work provides dependable information that can be used to improve educational outcomes.

Understanding students’ achievement
We collect information about teaching and learning from students, teachers and principals to help us understand achievement results.

Assessing a broad range of outcomes
We assess students’ achievement in the breadth of the curriculum and collect information about a range of valued student outcomes.

Employing best practice approaches to assessment
We use a range of best practice approaches to design authentic, engaging and effective assessment tasks.

Drawing on the knowledge and experience of practising teachers
We work with teachers to develop, trial and administer assessment tasks, and mark students' responses. This ensures that our work is grounded in good teaching practice and that the professional skills teachers develop during the study are taken back into schools.

Focusing on national growth in achievement
We use a sampling approach which avoids the need for high-stakes testing. We do not produce information about individual schools, teachers, or students.