Implementing PIRLS in two languages: a New Zealand perspective

Chamberlain, Megan; Bennett, Hannah

doi:10.3389/feduc.2025.1676722

PERSPECTIVE article

Front. Educ., 05 December 2025

Sec. Assessment, Testing and Applied Measurement

Volume 10 - 2025 | https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2025.1676722

This article is part of the Research TopicHow do we collect all this data? A performative account of International Large-Scale Assessment data collection in times of systemic diversityView all 7 articles

Implementing PIRLS in two languages: a New Zealand perspective

Megan Chamberlain¹^*

Hannah Bennett²^*

¹Independent Researcher, Wellington, New Zealand
²Ministry of Education, Wellington, New Zealand

As a former British colony, New Zealand is most often viewed as an English-speaking nation. While accurate, this descriptor does not provide insight into New Zealand’s post-colonial history and the attempts starting late last century to address the injustices associated with colonization. Monitoring of many policies and programs designed to address educational inequities use evidence from New Zealand’s national monitoring program and evidence from international large-scale assessments such as the IEA’s Progress in International Reading Literacy (PIRLS). PIRLS is the only large-scale study that regularly assesses New Zealand students in two languages—English and the Indigenous people’s language Māori. To adhere to the study’s standardized procedures, particularly around participation, the authors give their perspective on how implementing PIRLS in an indigenous language has evolved over the past 20 years. As context, the authors present a precis of New Zealand’s current educational context, including an introduction to Māori Medium Education which involves a small but critical sector charged with revitalizing an endangered language. The discussion also highlights some challenges associated with engaging an education sector for which the study appears to have little utility. It is envisaged that New Zealand’s experience serves as an example of a post-colonial country that is balancing the need for and wanting to be educationally inclusive, and whether this extends to an ILSA such as PIRLS to meet the study’s rigorous participation standards.

1 Introduction

The performance of New Zealand’s school system is currently monitored by three international large-scale assessment (ILSA) studies: the IEA¹ studies PIRLS² (since 2001) and TIMSS³ (since 1995), and the OECD’s⁴ PISA⁵ (since 2000). Additional information is gathered from a national curriculum-based monitoring program and secondary school qualifications data.⁶

ILSAs are highly valued by government officials for their rigorous design that enable both reliable trend measures for cohorts at key educational levels and insights into achievement in learning areas: reading, mathematics and science, and in the case of the IEA studies, instructional practice (Schagen et al., 2008; Chamberlain, 2012a). Although still generating robust and reliable data, since the early 2020s, New Zealand has not met the highest standards for participation established by the ILSAs’ governing bodies (Caygill et al., 2024; Chamberlain and Forkert, 2023; May and Medina, 2023).

Using PIRLS, the authors discuss the processes established over the past 20 or so years to enable the assessment to be implemented in two languages: English and the Indigenous language Māori. PIRLS is the only ILSA which New Zealand has consistently implemented in two languages, primarily because of the desire to be inclusive and have evidence for all of Year 5 (the New Zealand target grade) irrespective of the language of instruction.⁷

The authors describe the current governance context for schooling in New Zealand, the role of the Treaty of Waitangi and an introduction to Māori Medium Education and their connection to implementing PIRLS in two languages. An overview of key steps taken by the national research team over 20 years to ensure it adheres to the PIRLS international procedures and requirements at the same time as meeting New Zealand’s cultural and contextual expectations are also discussed.

While it is common for countries (or educational jurisdictions) to implement the PIRLS student assessment in more than one instructional language (e.g., Ebbs et al., 2023),⁸ the perspective presented here provides insights to implementing PIRLS in a language markedly different from the dominant national language of the country, English. Other countries participating in ILSAs and at a similar stage of reviving or protecting a unique minority language⁹ might benefit from reflecting on the New Zealand experience. The authors’ perspective also demonstrates the importance of policy makers and researchers being cognizant of a country’s cultural and education context in their cross-country comparison narratives.

2 New Zealand in brief

New Zealand is a culturally diverse and geographically isolated country of approximately 5.3 million people in the southwest region of the Pacific Ocean. A key social attribute used to summarize its population diversity is ethnicity, a measure of cultural affiliation as opposed to race, nationality, ancestry, or citizenship (Stats NZ, 2024a). About 18% of the population identify as Māori, the Indigenous people (Stats NZ, 2024b). New Zealand has two official languages: Māori (hereafter referred to as te reo Māori)¹⁰ and New Zealand Sign Language. English is a de facto official language by virtue of its widespread use.

In education, the curriculum is mostly delivered in the English language. In some school or class settings, provision is made to learn through the medium of te reo Māori, a Pacific Islands language (e.g., Gagana fa’a Samoa | Samoan), or, albeit rare, French (Ministry of Education, 2024a,b).

The Ministry of Education | Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga has overall responsibility for the ILSAs, including decisions on participation, funding, management and implementation, and reporting including bespoke analytical work to address specific policy questions. Information from ILSAs is used to develop system level indicators to monitor how well New Zealand is on track to achieve government goals for education (e.g., Ministry of Education, 2021; Educational Measurement and Assessment, 2024) and to aid understanding of how educational outcomes can be improved (e.g., Royal Society Te Apārangi Expert Advisory Panel, 2021).

New Zealand’s education system is highly devolved from central government. Governance, administration, and management of individual state funded schools are the legal responsibility of elected boards of trustees that are accountable to the government. New Zealand has a small independent school system. Between 2014 and 2018, and since 2024, a small number of charter schools have also operated in New Zealand.

3 The Treaty of Waitangi | Te Tiriti o Waitangi

The Treaty of Waitangi | Te Tiriti o Waitangi is widely acknowledged as New Zealand’s founding constitutional document. Signed in 1840, it was intended to create unity and partnership between Māori, the Indigenous people and the British Crown. Since the 1970s successive governments have attempted to redress many breaches of the Treaty, with efforts to honor it and its principles expanded (Orange, 2012). One example is the status of the Māori language. Te reo Māori was made an official language under an act of parliament in 1987 because of a claim for the government to protect the language under the Treaty of Waitangi.

Under the Public Service Act 2020, the Treaty plays a significant role in public service agencies’ policy development and implementation activities (New Zealand Government, 2020). As a public service agency, the Ministry of Education is expected to give effect to the Treaty of Waitangi when conducting research involving Māori and their communities. Namely, that Māori are given the opportunity to engage meaningfully in research activities in which they are involved (Stats NZ, 2020). Acknowledging the Treaty of Waitangi is also one of eight principles underpinning The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007),¹¹ as well as Ka Hikitia – Ka Hāpaitia | The Māori Education Strategy (Ministry of Education, 2025a).

4 Kaupapa Māori and Māori medium education

…Māori medium education provides a pathway for Māori educational achievement, and language revitalisation, supporting the personal, educational, socio-cultural and linguistic development of Māori tamariki [children] and whānau [wider family]. It therefore must be championed and fully supported if the history of cultural dislocation, deprivation and subjugation for Māori, is not to be perpetuated into the future (Rameka and Stagg Peterson, 2021; p. 315).

A school (or class within school) is considered a Māori medium education setting if teaching and learning occurs in the medium of te reo Māori (the Māori language) for at least 51 percent of the time. In an international context, it is immersion education, because most students are learning in their second language to become bilingual and biliterate (May et al., 2004). It is provided through two levels of immersion: Level 1 (81–100% of instructional time) and Level 2 (51–80% bilingual settings). Some English medium schools make provision for delivering the curriculum in Level 1 or Level 2 classes or units (Ministry of Education, 2024a).

Māori medium education not only plays a critical role in preserving and revitalizing an indigenous language and culture, but it aims to provide an education program in which students can experience academic success as in “mainstream” education (May and Hill, 2005; Education Review Office and Ministry of Education, 2021). For students who are Māori, this allows them to align academic success with their cultural identity. Since 2008, Te Marautanga o Aotearoa, aligned to but not a translation of The New Zealand Curriculum (for English medium settings) has been implemented in Māori medium settings. Formal or academic English instruction typically begins in about the fourth year of schooling but is more likely to be delayed until the seventh year of schooling; children will already be speakers of English (Hill, 2015; May, 2005).

Delivery of Māori medium education is complex with educational settings such as Kura Kaupapa Māori and Kura-ā-Iwi, having different histories, approaches, and peak body affiliations. However common features include: an underlying philosophy based on Māori world views, substantial use of te reo Māori as the medium of instruction as well as a greater involvement of Māori leadership, whānau (wider family), and iwi (tribe) (Ministry of Education, 2024c).

Māori medium education represents about 3% of the total primary and secondary school population, and almost all students are themselves Māori (96%). At Year 5, this being the PIRLS target grade, approximately 25% of the national student cohort are Māori. About 16% of this group (4% percent of all Year 5 students) were learning in a Māori medium setting in 2024 (Ministry of Education, 2024a,d).

4.1 National monitoring in Māori medium education

Efforts to monitor student learning in Māori medium education began in 1999 with the then sample-based national monitoring study, National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP). Performance tasks were translated from English to te reo Māori for this purpose. Issues identified with this process included the difficulty with translating technical words, the perception of adult language in the te reo Māori assessments, and a need for more words making them more linguistically challenging for students. Concerns were also raised by sector groups about the validity of comparing Māori students learning in English medium settings with those learning in Māori medium (Flockton and Crooks, 2000).

NEMP’s 2004 assessment of Year 4 students learning in Māori medium settings found a wide range of performance on reading comprehension tasks, with comparatively few students showing depth of understanding or identification of the finer details in text (Flockton and Crooks, 2007). While NEMP provided some evidence about learning outcomes, Hohepa (2008) also noted there was little research-based evidence on Māori medium reading instruction in the middle and upper primary school years, including the use of non-fiction, expository or informational texts in reading programs. Since PIRLS is designed around these two broad reading domains (Mullis and Martin, 2019), it was envisaged at that time that the study could complement the evidence from NEMP as well as fill the information void on instruction.

New Zealand’s current national monitoring study, Curriculum Insights and Progress Study which began in 2023, and its predecessor the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement (2012–2022), only evaluate student learning in English medium settings. Underpinned by Māori views of assessment (aromatawai) and aligned to Te Marautanga o Aotearoa, a new national monitoring study, Tīrewa Mātai, is in development for students in Māori medium education (Ministry of Education, 2023; Ministry of Education, 2025b).

5 New Zealand’s involvement in PIRLS

New Zealand has participated in all cycles of PIRLS since its inception in 2001 and is currently participating in PIRLS 2026.¹² At the beginning of each cycle, a comprehensive consultation and evaluation of its current relevance in meeting the information needs of the Ministry of Education is conducted before the decision to participate is made by senior officials.

5.1 Assessing in two languages

Once the decision is made to participate in PIRLS by officials, the next formality considers whether to implement the assessment in both English and te reo Māori. Assessing students in the latter involves the Māori medium school sector. Although it has always been deemed part of New Zealand’s national target (desired) population there is an argument for its exclusion on the grounds its students are learning through a curriculum different to that implemented to the majority of the target population (e.g., Foy and Joncas, 2003; Almaskut et al., 2023a).

Locally, Ka Hikitia (Māori Education Strategy), places a strong emphasis on supporting Māori students, regardless of the language in which they are learning, to achieve success as Māori, with data and research key for measuring it (Ministry of Education, 2025a). It is important to note that for the Māori medium sector it is considered inappropriate to offer the assessment only in English; having a choice of languages is key to implementing PIRLS in this sector.

5.2 Peak body consultation

Consultation over successive cycles has involved Māori medium education peak bodies—external advocacy groups that represent the schools under their auspices, such as Te Runanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori and Ngā Kura ā Iwi o Aotearoa. As part of the consultation, Ministry officials have liaised with the peak bodies either formally or informally. The perennial question asked by the groups is “what are the benefits for the Māori medium sector?”

Participation has not been without resistance. Some peak bodies do not support their schools to be involved because of the nature of PIRLS—an international study that requires participants to be assessed through translated materials, with none of the material developed or reflecting Te Ao Māori or the Māori world perspective; and concern that the reading achievement of Māori students’ learning in the immersion settings would be compared to Māori students learning in English medium settings. To date, as part of the undertaking to assess students learning in te reo Māori in PIRLS there has been no reporting for this group of students.

Ultimately, the decision to implement PIRLS in te reo Māori is the responsibility of senior officials and is made after consultation and advice from the Ministry teams directly responsible for Māori medium education, curriculum, policy, and research implementation. Across five cycles, the New Zealand research team has had the mandate to offer the assessment in two languages, with the decision whether to participate resting with the school and its board of trustees through its principal.

6 Sampling stratification and implementation

New Zealand’s PIRLS samples over successive cycles have required explicit stratification because of both the disproportionate size of the student population receiving instruction in te reo Māori compared with English, and the type of educational settings in which students receive instruction through either language. Changes to the stratification have occurred over the 20 years. In PIRLS 2001, the three explicit strata were: “Māori immersion schools, major urban location, and other locations” (Joncas, 2003, p. 231). By PIRLS 2021, the number increased to 11 which accounted for four language categories: “Māori immersion schools,” “English medium schools with immersion class settings (81–100%)”; “bilingual schools”; with the remainder, “English medium schools” (Almaskut et al., 2023b, pp. 8.104–8.105).

7 Translation to ensure a quality assessment

International procedures for adapting and translating the PIRLS instruments, including an international independent verification, are adhered to ensure comparability across countries and jurisdictions (e.g., Malak and Trong, 2007; Ebbs et al., 2023). Although the PIRLS instruments are developed primarily in American English, the local instruments are edited using New Zealand Standard English, which differs in vocabulary, spelling, and some grammar. Common measurements are also adapted from the system of Imperial Units of Measurement often appearing in the PIRLS texts to rounded equivalent metric system measures.

Translation into te reo Māori involves two-steps. Using the New Zealand Standard English versions, the instruments are first translated into te reo Māori by an accredited commercial translating service, then reviewed by two Māori language experts: one with expertise in linguistics and the second with curriculum and classroom practice experience. All instruments, with one exception, are entirely in te reo Māori. The one exception is the Early Learning Survey for completion by parents or caregivers, which is presented in a bilingual form.

The local review process has been critical. The challenge for the reviewers over the past 20 years has been to keep the integrity of the original translations but also to better reflect the evolving nature of te reo Māori advocated by the Te Taura Whiri i Te Reo Māori | Māori Language Commission as well as grammar and vocabulary experienced by 10-year-olds, most of whom are second-language learners. An example of a change has been to avoid transliterations¹³ which were acceptable in PIRLS 2001, and use an original Māori word, or one approved by Te Taura Whiri (Te Taura Whiri i Te Reo Māori, 2025). As well as te reo Māori evolving over time, there are also some iwi (tribal) dialect differences, which include the spelling of some words. While one form might be presented in the assessment, it has necessitated test administrators, often familiar with the local dialect, to provide the equivalent word to the students during the assessment.

7.1 Glossing

Based on the recommendation of the language reviewers, glossing was introduced in PIRLS 2006. For unusual or difficult vocabulary or grammar, the English equivalent was given in brackets after the Māori word or phrase, particularly in the literary material. This approach was adopted on the premise that PIRLS is an assessment of reading comprehension not an assessment of proficiency in Māori. It also recognized at that time that most students learning through the medium of Māori were bilingual to some degree and that some PIRLS material was drawn from domains that students were unlikely to be familiar with or had explored in Māori medium settings.

Results from New Zealand’s adaptation of the PIRLS 2016 Enjoyment Survey,¹⁴ an integral part of the PIRLS assessment (Mullis et al., 2017), found that students assessed in te reo Māori often gave the inclusion of “kupu Pākehā” (English words) as the reason for not liking the material. For this reason, and the advice from the curriculum and practice reviewer, all glossing was removed from the trend material in PIRLS 2021.

8 Incentivizing schools to participate

There is no requirement for New Zealand schools to take part in either the national monitoring program or ILSAs. As self-governing entities, schools’ boards of trustees through school principals make the decision to participate.

Small incentives are offered to all schools when they are requested to participate: a modest payment equivalent to one or two teacher relief days to acknowledge the school’s participation; and a (confidential) report for each school summarizing the contextual and assessment data for their students. Each student regardless of the language setting receives a participation certificate (bordered with the flags of each PIRLS country or jurisdiction) and a pen.

8.1 Māori medium engagement

Since PIRLS 2006, the PIRLS national team has engaged either formally or informally a liaison person to work directly with the sampled Māori medium schools and teachers of immersion classes in English medium schools. They have had the overall responsibility of promoting PIRLS and onboarding schools. School reporting considers the language of the instructional setting with reports prepared in te reo Māori and English and achievement results summarized on different reporting scales.¹⁵

Promotional material is prepared for school principals and their boards of trustees. In some instances, the liaison person has attended meetings arranged for parents/caregivers and undertaken the role of a Test Administrator.

In keeping with the notion of partnership, a te reo Māori name, Te Rangahau ā-Ao o te Aroā Pānui, with equivalency in meaning to PIRLS, was gifted by a senior Ministry of Education official for use in PIRLS 2006 and beyond and has been used regularly in communications and on the instruments with the sector.

While having all PIRLS instrumentation available in te reo Māori is paramount, Māori medium settings are not compelled to assess their students in te reo Māori, if English is preferred. Over five cycles at least one or two Māori medium settings have opted to assess their students in English. But that decision has been made by principals and teachers taking part.

9 Participation rates over time

New Zealand’s participation rates in PIRLS have met international standards across all cycles (Supplementary Table 1) despite some education policy changes impacting negatively on schools’ availability, Ministry compliance activities, unforeseen impact of natural disasters (e.g., Chamberlain, 2012b; Thrupp and Easter, 2012), or the impact of COVID-19 (Chamberlain and Forkert, 2023). However, school rates have waned over time.

Changes to the study design, however, have masked requirements to sample more schools. PIRLS 2006 is an example where the design was enhanced to allow achievement reporting on the processes of comprehension (Kennedy and Sainsbury, 2007). Effectively this meant more students being assessed. This change as well as a local sample design to better reflect the types of immersion settings required a significant increase in the number of participating schools from 156 in 2001 to 250 in 2006.

Participation among Māori medium schools has also waned. For example, in PIRLS 2021, 11 schools were sampled with five participating of which two were part of the original sample (Almaskut et al., 2023b).

10 Discussion

New Zealand participation in PIRLS is integral to its system level evaluation framework, and it has made a significant contribution to policy work on (English-medium) literacy for more than 20 years. It is the only international assessment study that has been implemented in both languages in all cycles. Data from students learning in te reo Māori have contributed to reliable and valid statistics for all of New Zealand’s target population, as well as for all-Māori student sub-populations. Ostensibly language of instruction is an appropriate attribute to stratify a sample but in effect, New Zealand’s PIRLS sample is being stratified by two different education sectors: the sizeable English medium and the small but no less important, Māori medium sectors. In New Zealand, language and education sectors are intrinsically linked.

Engagement of peak bodies, a liaison role, incentives for schools and students including the individual feedback reports, and the inclusion of curriculum experts when operationalizing the translation procedures have all been key to the success of implementing PIRLS in te reo Māori thus far. However, consistent with the experiences noted first by Flockton and Crooks (2000) and later by Keegan et al. (2013)¹⁶ the translated PIRLS texts are too difficult for Grade 4 Māori medium students at the stage of their language development. Difficulty is mostly due to differences in idiomatic expressions, linguistic structures, and vocabulary (including specialized technical vocabulary), which the translations have had to accommodate, often making the texts longer than the English versions.

It has been argued that as second language learners, the likelihood of not speaking the assessment language at home is greater and thus impacts on their ability to access an assessment like PIRLS. However, Howie and Chamberlain (2017) found that reading achievement differences among home language speakers were not as pronounced for New Zealand students assessed in te reo Māori as they were for students assessed in English, suggesting other influences such as differing curriculum emphases, may impact more on achievement when measured by PIRLS.¹⁷

Notwithstanding translation and other influences on individuals, such as language proficiency, PIRLS has had little utility for the Kaupapa Māori and Māori medium education sector. Understandably PIRLS is not designed to reflect Māori values and social practices and is thus lacking the cultural context needed to be able to reliably report findings about this group. The government’s announcement in May 2025 of Tīrewa Mātai, the national monitoring study of the Māori medium education sector described earlier in the paper is likely to compete significantly with PIRLS in the future.

So why has New Zealand continued to implement PIRLS in te reo Māori? As an ideal, inclusiveness and meeting our obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi have been the primary drivers to do so. From a pragmatic perspective the students learning in this sector are a part of the New Zealand system, which means PIRLS achievement and contextual data can be reported knowing that it is representative of all New Zealand’s target population.

If New Zealand chose to exclude the Māori medium education sector under a criterion such as that noted by Almaskut et al. (2023a, p. 3.6), the reported exclusion rate would increase significantly with the potential of raising doubt, locally and internationally, of the quality and representativeness of the captured data. TIMSS illustrates this issue as only New Zealand’s English-medium students now participate (see footnote 7); the equivalent exclusion rate in TIMSS 2003 was 4% compared with 8.5% in TIMSS 2023 (von Davier et al., 2024).

Finally, the insights discussed by the authors sum up 20 years experience implementing an ILSA in an indigenous language alongside the primary language of instruction. The inclusion of both languages has meant that summary statistics can be used confidently by policymakers as well as researchers, without the need for qualifiers. Notwithstanding any of the challenges, other countries or jurisdictions may benefit from the practical steps taken in New Zealand when adapting an ILSA in their unique cultural context.

Data availability statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary material. Further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding authors.

Author contributions

MC: Supervision, Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. HB: Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.

Funding

The authors declare that no financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge Eileen Paulin, Chief Adviser, Ministry of Education for her support and the review of the penultimate draft of this paper.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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The author(s) declare that no Gen AI was used in the creation of this manuscript.

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Supplementary material

The Supplementary material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2025.1676722/full#supplementary-material

Footnotes

1. ^International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement.

2. ^Progress in International Reading Literacy Study.

3. ^Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study.

4. ^Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

5. ^Programme for International Student Assessment.

6. ^New Zealand has also taken part in IEA studies ran in the 1970s and 1980s, the first module of the Second International Technology in Education Study, 1999; the International Civics and Citizenship Study, 2008; and two cycles of the OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) and the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC).

7. ^New Zealand implemented TIMSS 2003 (Grade 4 only) in English and te reo Māori.

8. ^See Exhibit 5.1,https://pirls2021.org/methods/chapter-5

9. ^van Dongera et al. (2017) defines a unique minority language as a traditional language without a kin state, spoken only in a particular territory.

10. ^Māori is a Polynesian language and part of the Austronesian family of languages. For an overview of the language and its history since colonization, see Higgins and Keane (2015).

11. ^The curriculum for English medium settings, with several (online) revisions during 2017–2025.

12. ^For international comparability, the nomenclature that references the calendar year PIRLS is implemented in Northern Hemisphere countries is used by the authors. With the exception of PIRLS 2021 and PIRLS 2026, most Southern Hemisphere countries including New Zealand, implemented PIRLS about 6 months earlier in the preceding calendar year. For example, PIRLS 2016 and PIRLS 2021 were implemented in New Zealand in 2015 and 2020, respectively. For PIRLS 2026, Southern Hemisphere countries will now assess in the same calendar year as Northern Hemisphere countries and this means that for the first time since 2001 New Zealand will run PIRLS in the same calendar year as Northern Hemisphere countries. All countries implement PIRLS toward the end of the school year.

13. ^Words borrowed from English. Typically, transliterations were used for measurement and days of the week. For example, "tuke" replaced the transliteration "mita" (metre) and "Rāapu" is used instead of "Wenerei" (Wednesday).

14. ^An integral part of the PIRLS assessment development work. In an open question, New Zealand asked its students to explain the reason for liking or disliking a text. As background to the New Zealand adaptation, see Chamberlain and Caygill, 2008.

15. ^After data collection, New Zealand’s PIRLS assessment data are summarized by item response analytical techniques using custom softwareConQuestdeveloped by M. Wu and colleagues at the Australian Council for Educational Research. See Wu et al. (1997). ConQuest: Multi-aspect test software, [computer program]. Camberwell: Australian Council for Educational Research.

16. ^Now known as "e-asTTLe", the authors describe the development of a standardised assessment tool for use in Māori medium settings.

17. ^The intended reading curricula for the language settings are described in Borthwick and Chamberlain (2022).

References

Almaskut, A., LaRoche, S., and Foy, P. (2023a). “Sample design in PIRLS 2021” in Methods and procedures: PIRLS 2021 technical report. eds. M. von Davier, I. V. S. Mullis, B. Fishbein, and P. Foy (Chestnut Hill, MA: TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center, Boston College), 3.2–3.31.