Introduction
The Year Group Report allows schools to compare their students’ achievement at a particular year level with the achievement of a national reference group. In most cases the reference group used will be the same year level as the students from the school. However, if the report is produced towards the end of the year, schools might choose to compare their students’ results with those of an older level reference group. This is because the national reference group data was collected for students at the beginning of the school year.
It is important to be aware that students reported on in the Year Group Report may not have taken the same test. To construct the report, raw marks have been converted to PAT scale scores, which can be compared regardless of which of the tests in a PAT series was originally taken.
Schools with small numbers of students at a particular year level (20 or less) should take care when comparing their students’ achievement with that of a national reference group. Statistics for small-sized cohorts are more likely to be affected by factors such as measurement error and extreme values, meaning the distribution of achievement could look different if the assessment were to be repeated.
The Year Group Report makes use of box plots. Follow the link to find an explanation of how to read a boxplot.
The Year Group Report
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