The latest education results indicating poor maths and writing achievement at intermediate level are probably down to haphazard standard setting, local school principals say.
National Standards data - released yesterday for the 2012 year - showed 85.1 per cent of the nation's Year 1 learners met the expected achievement standard for maths. This dropped to only 66.2 per cent by Year 8.
In the writing discipline, 77.1 per cent of Year 1 students achieved National Standards - compared to only 64.7 per cent for Year 8 pupils.
Te Mata school principal Michael Bain, who is also vice-president of the Hawke's Bay Principals' Association, said the decline could be because of "the way the standards are actually set up".
"The Year 5 writing target is exactly the same as the Year 6 writing target. It doesn't mean our Year 5s are under-achieving, it just means the writing targets are quite difficult to achieve," he said. "Equally, the Year 8 maths target is very difficult to achieve."
Publication of the new National Standards data, which show whether children are reaching expected reading, writing and mathematics standards, has renewed debate around the controversial system.
Aggregate results, which provide a national snapshot of last year's achievement levels, show a slight improvement on 2011.
At least 70 per cent of students in Years 1-8 achieved their respective standards in reading (77.4 per cent), writing (70 per cent) and maths (73.6 per cent).
Maori and Pasifika students continue to trail other pupils, despite Pasifika students making the most progress between years.
Male students lagged in reading and writing achievement compared to female pupils.
Results for Hawke's Bay schools are set to be released this month.
The country's largest teaching union, the New Zealand Educational Institute, slammed publication of the results, saying the most recent data failed to contribute anything new.
President Judith Nowotarski said the National Standards were as unreliable and invalid as last year in terms of judging teacher or school effectiveness.
Educators have warned of consistency problems in the reporting of National Standards achievement results since the system's 2010 implementation.
Education Minister Hekia Parata said the data gave a "comprehensive picture of our system and what we need to be focusing on".
But she was unable to guarantee uniformity between schools in their reporting of National Standards results when questioned in Parliament.
The Education Ministry was still working with about 13 schools which had not produced accurate data, she said.
"This is only the second year that the National Standards data has been reported and we expect the quality to continuously improve each year."
The ministry had established an expert advisory group to investigate issues with National Standards data.