NZCER PAT tuhituhi | writing assessment now available

New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) has released the new PAT tuhithui | writing assessment for Years 5 to 10 for Term Three, 2025.  

The brand-new assessment aligns with the updated English learning area for the New Zealand curriculum, and aspects of the literacy co-requisite for NCEA. It is designed to support the teaching and learning of writing, and has been developed by NZCER assessment experts with a focus on equity.  

The assessment will assess and report on the concepts included in the curriculum, and the alignment will be adjusted as the English learning area is finalised.

“NZCER has been running the PATs for more than 50 years now, so we’re really excited to finally be able to introduce a standardised, low stakes, classroom assessment that is designed specifically for the local context. We strongly believe in schools having many options for formative assessment available to them and are confident that PAT Tuhituhi will be a useful addition to the toolkits of kaiako across Aotearoa,” says Ben Gardiner, manager professional services at NZCER. 

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Teachers can submit student responses through the NZCER Assist portal, and immediate scoring and feedback will be available through an automated marking system, developed in collaboration with Vantage, an edtech company. The automated essay scoring system is called Intellimetric, and though it uses AI it is different from generative AI, says Mr Gardiner.

“Instead, it uses traditional AI/machine learning techniques, including natural language processing, text analysis and statistical models.

“We took this system and then trained it on an Aotearoa-specific set of rubrics and tasks, adapting them to fit our local context. Like with our updates to PAT Pānui and PAT Pāngarau, we did this with an explicit equity focus to ensure a diverse range of ākonga are represented in the assessment.”

The assessment evaluates students in four genres: persuasive, narrative, recount or informative. Ākonga will be marked on how well they communicate ideas for a target audience and intended purpose, and their use of language, structure and writing conventions. The genres each have a tailored rubric which cover focus, content development, organisation, language use and mechanics.  

Mr Gardiner says the scores and feedback will be “continually monitored” by the project development team and a psychometrician, same as the other PAT assessments. The assessment was designed with input from experts in mātauranga Māori and Pasifika perspectives, assessment design, curriculum development and literacy to ensure the tasks are “universally engaging and accessible.

“We are confident in the PAT Tuhituhi autoscoring – however, there may be instances where student writing cannot be successfully autoscored (for example, if it is too short). In these scenarios, PAT Tuhituhi provides feedback to kaiako to highlight responses that may need manual intervention.

“Kaiako can manually amend successfully autoscored results alongside instances where autoscoring has not been possible. We will monitor autoscoring and manual scoring and make changes as necessary.”

Kaiako will be able to query results, same as the other PAT assessments. 

Individual reports will include a holistic comment about the students’ writing, as part of the autoscoring process. Kaiako will be expected to support students’ engagement with the feedback, either individually or in a group context. NZCER plans on engaging with schools to explore how the feedback is received and to explore future directions. 

NZCER notes the PAT tuhituhi is completely different from the NCEA co-requisite and such the automated scoring systems are not aligned, though they operate on similar principles. Certain aspects of the PAT tuhituhi are aligned with the co-requisite. 

The assessment is not currently available as a pen-and-paper test. However, Mr Gardiner says one will be developed for Year 3 students in future, with options for other year-levels being explored. 

Schools can access the new assessment on a subscription basis through the NZCER Assist platform, the same way other PATs are accessed.  

NZCER’s education advisors will be on hand to run PLD workshops for PAT tuhituhi on request. Support can also be accessed using the NZCER Assist platform, which will be updated as schools provide feedback.