Assessment against the NZC

At Mid and End of Year an overall teacher judgement (OTJ) is made on a child’s progress and achievement towards their attainment of the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC). The expected levels of achievement are shaded blue on their Learning Summary graph (see section on Spotlight). It is expected that a curriculum level will take two years to complete, however, many do not fit this pattern. They include those with special learning needs, those who are gifted, and those who come from non-English-speaking backgrounds . Students learning an additional language are also unlikely to follow the suggested progression: level 1 is the entry level for those with no prior knowledge of the language being learned, regardless of their school year.

All overall teacher judgements are based on more than one piece of evidence - hence the guide only has data from formal assessments alone. Other sources of evidence include:

• teacher observation
• student book work
• Other student examples from across the curriculum