III. NOTAS EXPLICATIVAS
34. Medio Ambiente
The relationship between a school’s priority ranking for health and physical education and student achievement on the measure of Critical Thinking in Health and Physical Education was examined. At Year 4, achievement was negatively correlated with a higher priority ranking for health (r = -.23; p <.000) and for physical education (r = -.20; p<.000). At Year 8, there was no statistically significant correlation between either health or physical education and student achievement. Examination of the decile profile of high and low priority groups, explored in the following sections, may provide some explanation of these results.
Tables 4.16 and 4.17 display the average achievement scores for Critical Thinking in Health and Physical Education for Year 4 and Year 8 students according to the priority ranking reported by their school principal for health and physical education respectively. A high ranking group included students from schools where the learning areas aspects i.e. (health or physical education) was ranked in the first 5 learning areas, a middle group where it ranked 6th to 12th, and a low ranking group where the learning area aspect was ranked at 13th priority or lower. The results show that for both health and physical education, students at Year 4 schools where health or physical education was a high priority scored, on average, lower than students at those schools where health or physical education was a mid or low priority. There was no significant difference in achievement at Year 8 between students from schools that ranked health or physical education as a high or low priority.
Table 4.16 Year 4 and Year 8 student achievement by health priority ranking by school
Year 4 Year 8
Curriculum Priority/ranking High (1-5) Middle (6-12) (13-17) Low High (1-5) Middle (6-12) (13-17) Low Average Critical Thinking in Health
and PE score (scale score units) 73 89 93 112 111 113
N 54 364 161 76 334 114
Table 4.17 Year 4 and Year 8 student achievement by PE priority ranking by school
Year 4 Year 8
Curriculum Priority/ranking High (1-5) Middle (6-12) (13-17) Low High (1-5) Middle (6-12) (13-17) Low
Average (scale score units) 81 90 93 111 111 108
N 113 419 47 162 331 47
Exploration of the decile ranking of schools in the high and low health and physical education priority groups may provide some explanation for the above results. Figures 4.28 and 4.29 present the breakdown of Year 4 and Year 8 students by high, middle and low priority groups for health and physical education respectively, and display the percent of students by school decile in each priority group.
At Year 4, the group of students whose schools ranked health or physical education as a high priority contained greater proportions of students from low decile schools than mid or high decile schools. Conversely, the group of students whose schools ranked health as a low priority was made up of a greater proportion of high and mid decile school students. This pattern was more pronounced for physical education: there were no students from low decile schools in the low priority group. NMSSA results for Critical Thinking in Health and Physical Education, described in Chapter 3, have shown that achievement differences by school decile group are significant, with higher achievement by high decile school groups. At Year 8, the priority rankings assigned to health by schools were more similar across the decile groups than at Year 4. Assigning a higher priority to health did not result in higher achievement on average, for students at Year 8. In physical education, although the priorities were more similar by decile group at Year 8, very few
high decile schools ranked physical education as a high or a low priority. Students in the low priority physical education group came mainly from low and mid decile schools and scored slightly lower on average than the other two priority groups. The difference in average scores may be due to the difference in composition by school decile.
There was a tendency at Year 4, amongst the low decile schools in this sample, to place a higher priority on health and physical education than was the case among high decile schools. Generally, the reasons for these differences in priority for health and physical education by decile group and their implications for achievement across the learning areas deserve further consideration, but are possibly related to current Ministry of Education curriculum priorities for raising achievement in reading, writing and mathematics across the curriculum.
Figure 4.28 Year 4 and Year 8: Percentage of students in each decile group by health priority ranking
Figure 4.29 Year 4 and Year 8: Percentage of students in each decile group by PE priority ranking
5
Māori Student Achievement in Health
and Physical Education
This chapter presents the findings for Māori18
student achievement in health and physical education (PE) at Year 4 and Year 8. It looks at the variation of achievement within year levels and presents results against the levels of the NZC. It examines the difference in achievement between Year 4 and Year 8, and differences between sub-groups of gender, school decile and type of school. The chapter presents a profile of Māori students who scored above the benchmark of the national average at Year 4 and Year 8 with respect to gender, school decile, attitudes and opportunities to learn health and physical education. It also provides information on Māori students’ understanding of well-being, demonstration of movement skills, and frequency of physical activity outside of school.
In this chapter, we compare the Māori student sub-group to all students in the national sample. When making these comparisons the national sample will be referred to as ‘All Students’.
For some of the tables used in this chapter, particularly those associated with population sub-groups, fuller tables of averages, standard deviations, sample sizes, effect sizes, and 95 percent confidence intervals can be found in Appendix 4.