National Curriculum Mathematics Tests in England at Key Stage 2: Weights and measures?

Abstract

This paper reports on a series of statistical analyses carried out on some of the National Curriculum tests in mathematics for 11-year-olds in England. In England all 7-, 11- and 14-year-olds are tested in English, mathematics and science (11- and 14-year-olds only). The tests for 11-year-olds are very high stakes, in that the results are published in a school-by-school basis in newspapers etc. The analyses were prompted by the suggestion (from governmental organisations) that the balance of the curriculum content in the mathematics tests should be changed to accommodate better the require ments of the government-initiated National Numeracy Strategy. The analyses were carried out on two datasets, involving nationally representative samples of 11-year-old pupils. The analyses reveal some interesting patterns of change in the overall outcomes when Handling Data questions were statistically replaced by Number items of various kinds and also some interesting changes at the individual level, which could potentially affect the Level outcomes of a significant number of children nationally. However, the final conclusion reached is that, given an appropriately sized and structured pool of items across the curriculum content areas, tests can be constructed which are of an appropriate level of difficulty and discrimination power and which still allow year-on-year calibration of the national standards in mathematics.