More than half the year four students in Tuvalu who had their performance analysed in the PILNA 2021 reading assessment were enrolled in urban schools: 60% in urban schools and 40% in non-urban schools.

Figure CRF4.7 shows the average reading performance of year four students by school locality. Year four students in non-urban schools scored higher than those in urban schools. This was similar to the findings in PILNA 2018 but not PILNA 2015. In 2018, students in non-urban schools performed better than those in urban schools but, in 2015, students in urban schools performed better than those in non-urban schools (Figure CRF4.8). Further statistical testing needs to be done to understand if these differences in scores are significant or the result of chance or outliers.