A new regional assessment has found signs of recovery in literacy and numeracy across Pacific schools, but Tonga’s previous results show the country entered the latest assessment cycle with a particularly serious challenge in Year 6 reading.
The Pacific Islands Literacy and Numeracy Assessment (PILNA) 2025, released this week, assessed more than 41,000 students across 15 Pacific Island countries, including Tonga, in reading, writing and numeracy.
The regional results show modest improvements in reading and numeracy since the pandemic-affected 2021 assessment, although performance has generally not returned to 2018 levels.
For Tonga, however, the latest regional report is significant because its previous country results revealed a striking divide between comparatively strong numeracy performance and weak reading achievement, particularly among Year 6 students.
In PILNA 2021, only 30 percent of Tonga’s Year 6 students met or exceeded the minimum expected reading proficiency level, compared with 53 percent across the Pacific region.
That meant seven out of every 10 Tongan Year 6 students assessed were below the minimum expected reading standard.
The 2021 Tonga assessment also found students generally performed better at locating information directly from a text but struggled when required to interpret what they had read, think critically, form an opinion or provide reasons for an answer.
Those weaknesses have particular relevance to PILNA 2025, which again identified higher-order thinking and the application of knowledge as areas requiring continued attention across the Pacific.
Tonga stronger in numeracy
Tonga performed considerably better in numeracy in the previous assessment.
In 2021, 87 percent of Year 6 students in Tonga met or exceeded the minimum numeracy standard, compared with 72 percent regionally.
At Year 4, 75 percent of Tongan students met the numeracy standard, compared with 67 percent across the Pacific.
However, Tonga’s numeracy results had also declined from 2018. The proportion of Year 6 students meeting the standard fell from 92 percent in 2018 to 87 percent in 2021, while the Year 4 result dropped from 82 percent to 75 percent.
Reading presented a different and more concerning picture.
At Year 4, Tonga performed slightly above the Pacific average in 2021, with 47 percent meeting the minimum reading standard compared with 43 percent regionally.
But by Year 6, Tonga had fallen well behind the region, with only 30 percent reaching the standard.
Girls significantly ahead of boys
The earlier Tonga results also revealed a substantial gender gap.
Among Year 6 students in 2021, about 40 percent of girls met the minimum reading standard, compared with just 21 percent of boys.
Girls also recorded a significantly higher average Year 6 reading score than boys.
At Year 4, 56 percent of girls met the reading standard compared with 38 percent of boys.
The new 2025 regional results show the gender gap remains a Pacific-wide issue, although it has narrowed in reading and numeracy.
Across the region, 44 percent of Year 4 students met the expected reading level in 2025, while 72 percent reached the numeracy standard and 69 percent the writing standard.
At Year 6, 54 percent met the reading standard, 70 percent numeracy and 52 percent writing.
Girls continued to outperform boys across all three subjects.
Tonga-specific 2025 results not yet detailed
The publicly released PILNA 2025 regional findings do not provide the same detailed country-by-country breakdown available in Tonga’s 2021 report.
That means it is not yet possible from the regional report alone to determine whether Tonga has recovered from its particularly weak Year 6 reading performance or whether the gap with the rest of the Pacific remains.
The comparison will be important.
Tonga’s 2021 figures showed that while its students were outperforming the Pacific region in numeracy and Year 4 reading, the country faced a substantial problem by Year 6, where most students were failing to reach the expected reading standard.
The latest regional assessment now shows that Pacific Year 6 reading proficiency has risen to 54 percent, slightly above the 53 percent recorded in 2021.
Whether Tonga has shared in that recovery will therefore be one of the most important indicators of progress when detailed country results become available.
PILNA is administered by the Pacific Community’s Educational Quality and Assessment Programme and measures the performance of students who have completed approximately four and six years of primary education. Australia and New Zealand fund the regional assessment, with the Australian Council for Educational Research providing technical support.
