Standardised Assessment and Aromatawai Tool

This RFP is issued by Ministry of Education referred to below as “the Buyer” or “we” or “us”. We require a new ‘Standardised Tool for Assessment and Aromatawai’ that will deliver a long-term solution to support all schools and kura to effectively enact twice-yearly assessment of learners and is aligned to Years 3 to 10 of the new National Curriculum (The New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa). Through the ‘Teaching the Basics Brilliantly’1 policy, the Government has committed to lifting student outcomes in reading, writing, maths, panui, tuhituhi and pangarau, and have set an ambitious target of 80 percent of Year 8 students at, or above, the expected curriculum level for their age in reading, writing and maths by December 2030 (Government Target 72). To achieve this, we are introducing a whole-of-pathway approach to assessment, aromatawai, reporting and monitoring across our schooling system so that good quality data about students’ learning progress is available to inform teaching and learning, provide timely information to parents, whanau and caregivers, and underpin decisions at every level of the education system (including where any extra support or interventions are required at a system level). An important foundational aspect of this is the need to purchase a standardised tool to support schools and kura with assessment of students because, unlike many comparable jurisdictions, New Zealand currently has no standardised assessment tool that provides a clear view of how individual students are progressing until NCEA Level 1 (Year 11).