Question creators could improve on the context of numeracy assessment questions
My first comment is that I agree that calculators should be allowed for this assessment as calculators are generally used in all settings in the 21st century.
Recently I got hold of the new numeracy assessment which was trialed last year by a number of schools and then I read this article about the low pass rates. I think overall it was the context of some of the questions that was not in keeping with this "generation of students".
Here are a few examples that came to my mind:
Reading a Map
One question involved reading a map, however who uses a map nowadays. Students, and in fact the majority of people, use digital map apps to find out how far a destination is and how long it will take to get there by walking/bus/car. Fifteen year old students don't really know the compass points off the top of their heads. Of course they are likely to have been taught it but they probably think they don't need to learn it as google will always be at their fingertips. Other observation I have noticed in my tutoring is how many days there are in each month which was common knowledge in my day but almost all my students do not know this. Once again it is just a google away.
Grocery Shopping
There were shopping questions. One involved a person working in a supermarket deli weighing sliced meat which was priced per 100 grams This is a very common way to present prices, however, I notice that students aren't actively involved in the grocery shopping these days and barcodes do all the maths for them. Digital scales reads out the price for everyone.
Some of the questions asked about estimates and many students did not know what an estimate was or how to get "about how much something would cost by rounding numbers". Grocery shopping, especially during the pandemic was often done online, so students were removed from this side of purchasing and did not participate in evaluating prices or checking dockets for accuracy or discounts. Paying by cash is largely a thing of the past and some students were confused about whether to round to the nearest 10 cents or to the nearest cent.
Another question had the price of Taro per kg. None of my students here in Christchurch knew what Taro was, but there was a good picture of it so they could probably deduce it was some type of vegetable. Question creators could have chosen kumara or pumpkin as it would be more familiar to a wider range of students. Sometimes unfamiliar scenarios distract students so they start thinking "I don't even know what Taro is" and this can divert their thinking instead of allowing them to picture the situation in the worded passage clearly.
Confusion on Cost and Price
I also noticed that students got confused between price and cost. "Cost" was the overall total amount (the pay at the counter amount) and "price" was the amount per item. But this was confusing to students because the two terms are now often used interchangeably.
Bank Statement
The bank statement in the question was in chronological order but online bank statements are always in reverse chronological order. It also only gave one week of transactions and then asked if the person was "over-spending". There were motorcycle repairs listed which produced an overdrawn amount. Many of my students didn't realise that this was an "unexpected expense" which was unlikely to occur every week. The answer to this question was probably that one week of data is not enough to make an overall assessment on overspending ( a statistics concept), but others might have said they wouldn't expect motorcycle repairs to occur very often so the person was not overspending. Others might have thought that you should never be overdrawn and so said that the person was overspending. Perhaps all answers were accepted by the marking schedule as long as a sensible reason was given.
Online Assessment
It was an online assessment so I am wondering if it was automatically marked, There were some multiple choice questions but also some that required a sentence, so I assume the papers where overviewed by "human assessors" to ensure any automatic marking give correct marks.
Overall, just because students didn't pass it doesn't mean that in a more familiar context that they couldn't have got the questions correct.