The Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning (asTTle) is an online assessment tool, developed to assess students’ achievement and progress in reading, mathematics, writing, and in pānui, pāngarau and tuhituhi. The main purpose of easTTle is to support teachers in their teaching.
E-asTTle is used by a large number of schools to assess a large number of students from Years 1 to 10 for mathematics, reading and writing. It provides a robust and rich source of achievement data that can be analysed to add to the current evidence base regarding achievement and progress in mathematics, reading and writing. This is the first comprehensive study by the Ministry of Education on the use of the e-asTTle tool for research purposes.
The analysis was mainly descriptive and was informed by the following overarching research questions:
- How well do students perform in mathematics, reading and writing, and how does this compare to other findings?
- What is the pattern of student achievement/progress over time? How does this pattern relate to the expectations outlined in the New Zealand Curriculum?
- To what extent does student performance differ when analysed by student and school characteristics?
Purpose
The tool’s main purpose is to support teachers in their teaching, it is therefore important to understand the strengths and limitations of the tool for research purposes.
The first objective of this project was to assess the potential of the e-asTTle dataset as a source of progress and achievement data for research purposes.
The second objective was to report on initial findings from the data as a way of illustrating its potential.