This is a slightly shorter version of Assessment News, NZCER's once-per-term pānui focused on all things assessment. If you'd like to subscribe to the full pānui, you can do that here!
A new pricing system for Progressive Achievement Tests
From Graeme Cosslett, Tumuaki, NZCER
Tēnā koutou, and welcome to our latest Assessment News. I'd like to begin with a big update to our PAT pricing that will come into play from January 1st, 2027 – we are streamlining subscription fees and introducing scaling pricing.
Nobody is paying more for their PATs – and in many cases, schools will be paying slightly less. We are combining per-subject and annual NZCER Assist subscription fees into one, which will be scaled depending on your school's EQI index.
Per-assessment fees do not change, and will not be increasing in 2027 as they have in recent years.
We want this change to support schools and kura serving learners who face greater socioeconomic barriers, particularly ākonga Māori, Pacific learners, and learners from low socioeconomic communities. Our pricing model will also cater for schools assessing 50 or fewer students in the calendar year. This is in line with our commitments to improving equity in education, supporting Māori educational aspirations, and strengthening aromatawai and assessment for learning. It will also make it much easier to subscribe to our assessments as we continue developing and expanding the suite of PATs.
This model will be in place for the start of 2027. We recognise this is a small contribution to a much wider challenge of equity in education, but still hope it supports schools to access PATs. We welcome your feedback, and will use what we learn to refine our approach.
In short:
- Annual subscription fees and per-subject fees are becoming one single fee
- Pricing for this will be scaled depending on a school's EQI band and if if your school is assessing fewer than 50 students
- Per-assessment fees are remaining the same for 2027 (no increases)
- Nobody is paying more for their PATs
Ngā manaakitanga,
Graeme Cosslett, Tumuaki, NZCER
New PATs available – and free to use in Term 4
We are pleased to have three new PATs available for schools this term at a greatly reduced cost. We recognise that – as with all new assessments – norm data will not be available until sufficient students complete assessments, and hope this adjusted pricing encourages you to take part. The three free assessments this term are:
- PAT Pānui | Reading Comprehension for Year 3, which is now available (online only) with all new content and questions. You'll find it as Test 1A Foundation in NZCER Assist. Paper-based materials will be available in 2027.
- Last term we released PAT Tuhituhi Te Pihinga, a paper-based standardised writing assessment for year 3-4 ākonga, with its own specially developed rubric.
- Finally, we have PAT Tau Whakahau | Rational Number – a subset of PAT Pāngarau that focuses on rational number and aligns to key areas of the new curriculum. We've also just released guidance on how this assessment's content lines up with the curriculum.
All three of these assessments will be free to use in Term 4 (no per-assessment costs). If you’re new to PATs and want to try them out, we’re also pro-rating subscription fees for NZCER Assist, and there is no subject fee for PAT Rational Number or PAT Tuhituhi Te Pihinga.
So if you’re interested in seeing what PATs are all about, or trying out one of these assessments before committing to PATs in 2027, now’s the time to get involved!
Monitoring progress with PATs - progress descriptors, scale scores and new reports
As our Education Advisors noted a week or two ago, updated mapping of PAT scores to the progress descriptors is still ongoing while we wait for similar work to be done on the SMART Tool.
However, our initial mapping for PAT Pāngarau and PAT Pānui is still perfectly valid for your year-end reporting, as progress descriptors are for year-end expectations.
Scale score report available for PAT Tuhituhi and Te Pihinga
While we continue developing mapping for PAT Tuhituhi and the progess descriptors (which we hope to have available for you once we factor in Term 4 assessment data), we have released scale score reports for this assessment - now available in NZCER Assist.
You can locate this report on the 'Reporting tabs' at the top of the page. The report shows where each of your students is sitting in relation to the scale (PATw). When you hover over a student's name, their scale score appears and click on their name to go to the individual student item report.
Monitoring progress in learning October 2026 update
We have also updated our Monitoring Progress in Learning document to include PAT Tuhituhi | Writing. This document details average scale scores and scale score progress across our PATs, and you will find the October 2026 update of it here.
As always with PAT information, please take into account measurement error and consider the PAT result as a snapshot of how ākonga fared at that point in time – not as a summative judgment of their capabilities. It is very important that teachers always consider test results alongside other good quality assessment information – like from observations, conversations, tasks and tools.
Related reading: Talking turkey about test scores: Avoiding the narrative fallacy when interpreting student data, by Dr Charles Darr
Upcoming workshops: Find us around the country (and online) in Term 4
Our Education Advisors will be out and about hosting leadership workshops on running PATs, understanding reporting and NZCER Assist features, and how to use your assessment data to improve teaching and learning.
Our Auckland workshops are now full, but Wellington ones in Week 5 have spaces still available!
As always, contact us at education.advisor@nzcer.org.nz if you have any questions.
We want to hear your views about a student engagement tool
NZCER is doing an equity-focused refresh of the Me and My School student engagement survey. The redesigned tool will integrate recent advancements in research, and better reflect today’s learners. We want to ensure the tool can readily be used by teachers, school leaders, and school boards to improve teaching and learning and equity.
We believe that tools are best developed with input from the people who use them. Whether you are a current or past user of the Me and My School survey, or if you are interested in using a redesigned tool, we would really like to hear your views.
Shortly we will be sending out a feedback questionnaire. Please submit your email here if you would like to be emailed the questionnaire link.