5. Question No. 5—EducationERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays) to the Minister of EducationQuestion No. 5—Education5. ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays) to the Minister of Education: What improvement if any has there been in achievement levels for year 8 students since 2017 according to e-asTTle data and is she satisfied with the level of improvement in student achievement over the last five years?Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Education): To the first part of the question year 8 progress has remained constant over this period meaning no significant change has been shown and the pattern is consistent with natural cohort variance. To the second part of the question I have said a number of times that student achievement in maths in particular needs to improve which is exactly why we are rewriting the curriculum to ensure it is clear what students need to know and no learning is left to chance. The new maths curriculum will be available for teaching this year and the common practice model will be in place from 2024.Erica Stanford: Is she seriously saying that after almost six years of her Government in charge of the education system the only thing that she can point to is a strategy document and a new curriculum that doesn't come into place until next year and the other one is still out for consultation?Hon JAN TINETTI: No.Erica Stanford: Why is it then after five years of her Government that the Ministry of Education today in select committee were telling us that there was no improvement in the achievement of our year 8 students in reading writing and maths according to e-asTTle assessment data?Hon JAN TINETTI: As the member and I discussed at the Education and Workforce Committee this morning the primary purpose of e-asTTle is to support teachers in their teaching for formative assessment not summative assessment. This needs to be taken into account when looking at the aggregated results as these can vary over time depending on the nature of the assessment that has been undertaken. There is no evidence of significant change in year 8 e-asTTle results since 2017. Results can be affected by the mix of students being assessed the nature of the assessment formative versus summative—as I said—the timing of the assessment and the specific strands being assessed.Erica Stanford: Why is it that in five years of her Government our year 8 students—of which 45 percent are at curriculum for math and 35 percent for writing—are no better off than they were in 2017?Hon JAN TINETTI: As I said this morning to the member you can't make that judgment from the e-asTTle data; the e-asTTle data is not to be used in that particular way. It is not a representative sample but purely schools that choose to use it use it—so it's not nationally representative. National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement (NMSSA) is designed specifically for the New Zealand Curriculum and uses teachers throughout the process of creating implementing and marking the student assessment. That captures the data that we need to see. The last data that we collected on maths—in 2013 and 2018—were 41 and 45 percent of year 8 students were at expected curriculum level respectively. Later in 2023 we will report mathematics and statistics again.Erica Stanford: According to her answer to the primary question—when she said that year 8 student achievement is constant; there hasn't been any significant change—can she explain why that is after five long years of her Government looking after our education department?Hon JAN TINETTI: That's exactly what I did say before: the e-asTTle data is not something that is used for summative assessment in that particular way. We don't make judgments around what is happening on the national level; we wait for the NMSSA results to come out to make that judgment.Erica Stanford: Can she justify to this House right now how she has spent $22 million on 22 ministry leadership advisors when support isn't getting into our classrooms to raise achievement—in five years? Hon JAN TINETTI: Yes we have spent that money because that is what the sector asked us to spend that money on.