Conclusions for reading performance
Minimum proficiency levels
In grade five, 40% of the students performed at or above the expected minimum proficiency level. This is similar to the regional achievement of 43%.
In grade seven, 51% of the students performed at or above the minimum proficiency level. This is similar to the regional achievement of 53%.
Gender
Girls outperformed boys in both grade five and grade seven in reading. In grade five, the percentage of girls who met or achieved above the expected minimum proficiency levels was 47% while for boys it was 34%. The difference in performance in mean scores between boys and girls was 34 points.
In grade seven, 58% of girls were at or above the expected minimum proficiency levels compared to 45% of boys and there were 30% girls at the top levels (7-8) compared to 19% boys. The difference in performance in mean scores between boys and girls was 27 points.
School authority
Students in non-government schools outperformed those in government schools in both grade five and grade seven. On average, in 2021 the mean difference in performance for both grades between government and non-government schools was around 57 points. Between 2018 and 2021 the difference in performance was higher in government schools than in non-government schools.
Students in grade seven in non-government schools performed slightly higher between 2018 and 2021, while the performance of grade seven students in government schools fell by 32 points in the same period.
Over the three cycles of PILNA, the mean scores of grade seven students in non-government schools consistently increased. This was not the case for grade seven students in government schools whose scores increased from 2015 to 2018 and then decreased to 2021.
School location
The mean performance of grade five students in reading in non-urban schools continued to increase over the three cycles. Performance by grade five students in urban schools dropped by 36 points between 2018 and 2021.
The mean performance of grade seven students in reading in both urban and non-urban schools increased between 2015 and 2018 but dropped between 2018 and 2021. The decrease in mean scores was more pronounced in non-urban schools (40 points) than in urban schools (20 points).
Coding
The coding of student responses in reading shows that students in Marshall Islands struggled when asked to identify information when there is competing information in the way. Students at both grade five and grade seven struggled when asked to interpret what they had read, and when asked to think critically about what they had read in order to form an opinion or give a reason for a response.
Trends
In grade five, the mean performance score increased by 23 points from 2015 to 2018 but decreased by 27 points in 2021.
In grade seven, the mean performance score increased from 490 points in 2015 to 511 points in 2018 and but then decreased by 25 points between 2018 and 2021.
