New Zealand schools provide written reports to parents, family and whānau twice a year, to describe children’s progress and achievement across the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC). Your child’s teacher will evaluate their progress and achievement using what they know about their learning from working with them in everyday classroom tasks. They may also make use of more formal tests and assessments.
New Zealand schools develop their own reporting formats, so the report you receive will be unique to the school your child attends. It will include information about your child’s achievement in relation to the levels of the NZC. It is expected that most students will take two years to progress through each level of the NZC. So, for example, if your child is at the end of year 2, they could be expected to have completed level one of the NZC. If your child has just completed year 5, they could be expected to be mid-way through level 3 of the NZC.
Your child’s report may also contain information about their achievement in relation to the stages of the Number Framework. It is also likely to include information about their ability to learn, communicate and interact with others.
Ideally, the reports you receive will be part of an ongoing information sharing process between you and the school, focused on working together to improve your child’s ongoing progress. Sharing quality learning information helps everyone to understand and support the learner.
If you don’t understand the information provided in your child’s written report, or you have concerns about their achievement, contact their teacher to talk about it. Useful questions to ask include:
- Does my child participate (take part) well in class?
- Is my child progressing as expected?
- What do they do well?
- What do they need help with?
- What can I do to help?
- Does my child seem settled at school? How do they get along with others?
- Are there any areas for concern?
- What will they learn next?
- What's the best way to contact you if I want to follow up on anything we've talked about?
You may also like to ask to see records of your child’s learning. This could include their work in everyday classroom mathematics programmes, as well as portfolios and the results of tests.
Your child’s report may include a student progress report from the Progress and Consistency Tool (PaCT). PaCT is an online tool, designed to help teachers make dependable judgments about students' achievement that can be used to track progress in reading, writing, and mathematics. This information sheet has been developed to help you understand the information provided in PaCT student progress reports.