Page 12 - Islands Business February 2023

Education Education

Dilkusha school students. Photo: Fiji Ministry of Education
PILNA IDENTIFIES ROOM FOR

IMPROVEMENT

By Samantha Magick low, or that students’ performance is very high in numeracy
throughout the region. They say these results need more
Pacific Island teachers are satisfied and proud of their work, investigation.
but many of them have high stress levels. The results have prompted the Pacific Community’s (SPC)
This is one of the newly-released findings of the Pacific experts to identify three main areas where students com-
Islands Literacy and Numeracy Assessment (PILNA) for 2021. monly misunderstood or answered incorrectly in the numeracy
PILNA, which measures numeracy and literacy in Year 4 and tests; solving word problems involving numbers, identifying
Year 6 students in 15 Pacific island countries, found that while and interpreting data presented in graphs, and subtracting
95% of teachers were frequently satisfied with their jobs, simple sets of numbers, and gives recommendations of how
only 75% of them were satisfied with their salaries and 80% these areas might be improved.
reported feeling frequently stressed.
“This needs to be understood in more detail to ensure that
the education workforce has the salaries needed to continue ON AVERAGE
providing good education and retain good workers,” the YEAR 4 STUDENTS
AREN'T MEETING
report states. READING
Feelings of being overwhelmed by work are also common EXPECTATIONS
(70% of respondents), and 40% of teachers said they believe
their job is having negative effects on their physical and Reading
mental health. There is an urgent need to improve reading levels according
to PILNA 2021.
“Reading performance decreased in comparison to PILNA
AVERAGE 2018; on average, year four students are not meeting the
NUMERACY expected minimum proficiency level and year six students are
SCORES
DECLINED barely achieving the expected minimum proficiency level,”
the report states. It continues, “Reading performance has not
shown any substantial increases over time for either year four
More than 40,000 students took part in PILNA 2021, which or year six students. Identifying and addressing the reasons
looks at numeracy and literacy standards, comparing them to why reading performance is struggling to increase over time
benchmarks developed for the Pacific context. is, therefore, a priority.”
The survey found that student performance—particularly in Writing performance, the third area to be tested, stayed
numeracy— decreased in most areas compared to 2018, apart about the same for year six students in 2021, but improved
from year four writing, which improved. dramatically for year four children surveyed.
Across the region, students are on average, exceeding However a proficiency scale for writing is still to be de-
minimum expected numeracy proficiency levels, leading the veloped, so performance cannot yet be measured against
report’s authors to suggest that those benchmarks may be too stakeholder expectations.

12 Islands Business, February 2023