The Pacific Islands Numeracy and Literacy Assessment (PILNA) is the only regional mechanism to assess the basic numeracy and literacy skills of Pacific Island children. The third cycle of this assessment was conducted last year by the Pacific Community’s Educational Quality and Assessment Programme (EQAP). The assessment gauges the state of student learning after four and six years of formal education. The 2018 cycle is the largest PILNA research to date. It was administered in 10 languages and involved 40,195 students of 925 schools in 15 countries. The countries involved were Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Republic of Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Tonga, and Vanuatu.
The aggregated findings on the learning outcomes for the region’s Year 4 and Year 6 students in numeracy and literacy are set out in the PILNA 2018 Regional Report. This report will be disseminated to all stakeholders. However, the findings of individual countries are only presented to the education heads of each PIC involved.
As the region’s only large-scale education research instrument, the assessment was aligned to the revised Pacific Regional Benchmarks for Literacy and Numeracy (2016). It is envisaged that the findings from the assessment will inform teaching pedagogy and education policy for the improvement of student learning in the Pacific.
This longitudinal research was made possible through funding support from the governments of Australia and New Zealand.