e-asTTle – Overview and access

e-asTTle is designed to provide reliable and valid assessment information for you and your students to enhance teaching and learning. It supports the shift in best educational practice from an emphasis on assessment of learning to assessment for learning.  

e-asTTle is free of charge for use in New Zealand schools.

Below is a list of what makes e-asTTle such an effective assessment tool:

• Tests created by teachers can be used at any time of the year.
• There are many thousands of possible permutations of tests that can be created. It uses a programming method (linear programming heuristics) to create the "best possible" test while also meeting the requirements specified by the teacher.
• It allows teachers and school leaders to set tests that are aligned with the curriculum when they want and at the level they want.
• It allows teachers and school leaders to measure student progress over time.
• It gives teachers a realistic picture of how well each student, class, or school is doing compared to the national average and the curriculum requirements (including curriculum levels). It allows comparisons to other groups such as gender, ethnicity, English as a second language, or "schools like mine".
• It provides rich interpretations and specific feedback that relate to student performance (rather than simply providing a score). It identifies areas of student weakness and strength that may otherwise go unnoticed.
• It presents the results in visual ways making it easier for teachers to discuss performance and the steps they're taking with students, parents, and boards of trustees.

Helping students see why something is important is more likely to trigger their personal desire to learn and this desire is an incredibly powerful force that can carry learners through repeated disappointments and difficulties (Crooks, 2002).

Give students the opportunity to reflect on the information from their last assessment. 

Ask students to discuss, with you or with a peer:  

• How they have felt their learning since that assessment has gone.
• What they are confident they now know.
• What they still find difficult.
• What they think this new assessment might show.   

Students who see personal value in an assessment are more likely to engage and perform at their best. You and your student can decide together if this is a suitable time for a new assessment. Consider how you can make your students feel comfortable with this discussion.  

Always read and follow administration guidelines and instructions found at the beginning of the test. 

If you do diverge from these instructions to provide accommodations for students, you will need to make an adjustment to some of your interpretations of results, including comparisons to national norms - use your own judgement here.  

Wherever possible, design the assessment with the students.    

This enables students to discuss the criteria for test creation with you so that they are confident the test will provide the best information about what they have been trying to learn. Even when the test is predetermined, it is still extremely important to tell the students why they are being tested, how it will still help them with their learning, and why it is important that they engage fully with it.  

Ensure that the students are thinking about how to complete the assessment properly.  

Younger students and those with reading difficulties may need help to understand the instructions for completing the test. Check that they complete the attitude questions and the practice questions correctly first.  

Make sure that all students know not to guess the answers. Guessing correctly will give them a better score but will not provide any information about what they should learn next. If they are sure they do not know the answer, they should leave the item unanswered. If they think they might know the answer, they should answer it. Assessment for learning has an emphasis on maximising information about what the student does and does not know and understand.  

At the end of each assessment, check that the assessment tasks were not too hard or too easy for the students.   

Assign tests that would be challenging for each student. This may require tests of varying difficulty. Ideally, students would be getting about 60% correct. Depending on the purpose of testing, if students get less than 10% right or wrong you may need to reassign an easier or harder test for some students, or consider alternate methods of assessments that are more suitable.  

Review the results alongside your students.

You can decide with the student if you think the results give an accurate picture of what they know and can do. Check against earlier tests to see if the pattern of progress shown makes sense. If there are any discrepancies in results, do your best to determine why this is. Normally the student will know what went wrong and you can decide together on the appropriate action to take.

Have the students analyse the results.  

Students can analyse results individually (from the Individual Learning Pathway and Student Progress reports), as well as in groups. Explain any terms in the Individual Learning Pathway Report that they do not know. Ask them to establish what they think their next learning steps might be.

e-asTTle training opportunities are available throughout New Zealand at no cost to participants. This initial support is funded by the Ministry of Education and provided by Evaluation Associates | Te Huinga Kākākura Mātauranga facilitators. The training is in the form of regional and online workshops.

For more information, see e-asTTle (evaluate.co.nz)

To request assistance or further information, please contact [email protected]

Step 1: Apply for ESL accounts (usernames and passwords for accessing e-asTTle)

Your school’s principal can delegate responsibility to a staff member to authorise ESL user accounts for staff at your school. Your school will need a Delegated authoriser who is able to request staff access to the following applications:

• e-asTTle
• PaCT
• NZQA Extranet for secondary school users

Step 2: Complete e-asTTle training

Information about facilitated learning can be found on this page. See the Overview of e-asTTle tab to find out more about Ministry-funded e-asTTle courses. This training is optional but highly recommended. At a minimum, the school administrator and at least one teacher should have completed training.

Step 3: Review the e-asTTle support material.

Schools are strongly encouraged to review all e-asTTle support material. Check the Message of the Day on the e-asTTle homepage for important news and updates.

Access to become a delegated authoriser.

To become an ESL Delegated Authoriser, the principal or delegated authoriser(s) in your school will need to download and complete the School Delegated Authoriser Request Form.

For more information for how to use ESL, click here.

Further information 

If you have any further queries about Education Sector Logons or being an ESL Delegated Authoriser contact the Education Service Desk at 0800 422 599 (Select option 2 for passwords, option 4 for all other queries) or email [email protected]

Access for teachers

To access e-asTTle you will need your own ESL account (username and password) which is administered through the Education Sector Logon (ESL) system.

To apply for access to the e-asTTle application, please contact your school's ESL Delegated Authoriser, as they can submit your access requests online.

Access for external co-ordinators

If you are an External Co-ordinator you will need to follow a different process to access e-asTTle. You can find information about how to become an external coordinator on the roles tab on this page.

See Materials that come with this resource to download the e-asTTle External Coordinator Request Form - ESL 06 (March 2023) (.pdf)

Educator login issues

Check that you are using the correct login page. The login pages are different for teacher and students.

Teacher login page

Student login page

If you are certain you are entering the correct username and password but cannot login, you will need to ask your school’s e-asTTle administrator to check that your user account is set up correctly. Check you do not have caps lock on.

Please refer to e-asTTle – Managing student data for more information about student login issues.

Changing passwords

Passwords for teachers must meet certain requirements - Your passphrase must be at least 16 characters long. Use a passphrase - a sequence of words or a sentence - that is easy for you to remember but difficult for others to guess.

For details about student passwords, see e-asTTle – Managing student data.

The e-asTTle portal is supported by the most recent versions of:

For desktops:

• Mac: Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox
• Windows: Chrome, Edge, Firefox
• ChromeOS: Chrome

Bookmarking the e-asTTle website is advisable. Create your bookmark after you have logged in with your Education Sector Login or from the e-asTTle login page for teachers. Issues and error messages can occur if the bookmark is not created correctly.

Use the buttons inside e-asTTle to move around. Avoid using the “Back” button at the top of your browser as this may cause issues. 

Refreshing the page will cause the application to reload. This means that you may lose data that has not been submitted. A warning dialog box will be displayed to indicate that your changes may not be saved.

The menu on the left-hand side of the screen is collapsable. Click the arrow at the top to expand or hide the menu. When the menu is collapsed you will only be able to view icons.

Remember to check the ‘Quick Help’ button on each page for useful tips and tricks.

Enabling pop-ups

If your report or paper test is not coming up, make sure your Internet browser has pop-ups enabled. 

• Block or allow pop-ups in Chrome.
• Firefox Pop-up blocker settings, exceptions, and troubleshooting.
• Allow or block pop-ups in Safari on Mac.

Filters

Because information is often presented in tables, they have filters at the top. 

Filters let you bring up information you want.  

• Use the drop-down menus to select an option.
• Leave on “All” to view everything available. Then select “Search".  

Image description: Screen shot of the drop-down boxes available to filter for information required. There are five drop down boxes shown; Subject, Owner, Delivery, Status, Year. On the right hand side of the image is a “search” button. There is a blue speech bubble on the right hand side with white text reading “Show me all Maths tests created in 2024”.

Sorting

Any column with a blue title has an arrow next to it for sorting. For example:

Image description: Screenshot of menu showing where to order tests alphabetically, by subject or total time. The column titles are in a blue box which reads from left to right  “Test Name", “Subject” and “Total time” There are small arrows beside each heading. There is a blue speech bubble on the left hand side of the image pointing to the heading “Test Name” which has white text within it reading “order my tests alphabetically”.
 

Homepage

The “Message of the Day" tells you:  

• About changes to system functionality.
• About systems issues.
• When scheduled systems maintenance is taking place – you may not be able to access e-asTTle during maintenance. 

Log out using the button at the top right-hand corner of the homepage. 

Feedback

Feedback is important and helpful. The blue feedback tab is on the right-hand side of the home page. Use this to:  

• Let the development team know how they are doing.
• Make suggestions.
• Report any issues experienced while using e-asTTle.  

Please include your email address if you would like a response sent back to you.

Image description: Screenshot of the feedback survey available. This shows a response on a scale of 1-10 of how likely the user is to recommend e-asTTle to a colleague.

The second part provides tabs to click on if the user would like to provide specific feedback, give specific suggestions or other.

Quick Help

Where quick help is available on a page, a button is on the upper right-hand corner of the screen. It provides useful advice and guidance to support your use of e-asTTle.

Urgent help

The feedback form is not intended for urgent enquiries.

For urgent help contact the Education Service Desk.

call: 0800 225 542

e-mail: [email protected]

Shared response data may be used for research and re-norming purposes. You are encouraged to share this data so it is available for continual e-asTTle reporting improvement.

If you choose to share your data, identifying information about your school and students will be removed during data extraction to ensure anonymity. The current default for sharing data is set to enabled.

To change your "Research Data" settings:

1. Select "Maintenance" from left menu.
2. Select "Research Data Settings". This page shows your current setting which is defaulted to enabled. To disable this data sharing option, untick the checkbox.
3. Select "Save".

A confirmation box will appear – select "OK" to confirm.

Image description: A screenshot of the Research Data settings options. The title is Research Data Settings. Below the title the settings are listed and there is a ticked checkbox stating "I understand and agree to allow the data from my school to be used for research purposes. At the bottom of the page there are two bottoms: 'Go Back' and 'Save' . 

The table below highlights the tasks and actions carried out by each of the e-asTTle roles.

Actions denoted by an asterisk* can be carried out only if you are:

• The Test Owner (you created the test).
• The Group Owner (you created the group).

Image description: Screen shot of table of tasks and actions carried out by e-asTTle roles. Each task section is greyed out and tasks are displayed under the following headings creating tests, deleting tests, managing students and other. Each role sits along the top of the table which includes; school administrator, teacher, external coordinator, school leader, MOE (Ministry of Education) Administrator, student. Ticks have been placed in the table aligning the role with which tasks they can carry out.

External Coordinators have a special role in e-asTTle. They can gain access to multiple schools and aggregate and report data across these schools. As an External Coordinator (EC), you have the same level of e-asTTle access as teachers. In addition, you can use e-asTTle across multiple schools.

For example, you can:

• Create and maintain groups of students across multiple schools.
• Copy an existing test in one school and assign it to students in another school.
• Assign tests and view reports for common tests across multiple schools.
• Aggregate results for tests across multiple schools.

You can also collaborate with other ECs if you have at least one school in common. Doing so allows you to:

• View other EC tests.
• Assign tests created by another EC to the groups within schools you have access to.
• Copy and create similar tests to another EC.
• Mark tests created by another EC.
• View reports for tests created by another EC.

An external coordinator can view performance of students within a cluster or by school.

External Coordinator roles may or may not be staff members. They could be Professional Learning Development (PLD) Providers, Cluster Coordinators, Across School Kāhui Ako Leaders, Researchers or Temporary Coordinators.

PLD Providers

Access to e-asTTle data may help a PLD provider develop effective teaching and learning programmes. Reasons a provider might view e-asTTle data are to prepare themselves for workshops, to view student reports, to track progress and to carry out various other activities within the school or cluster they are contracted to.

Cluster Coordinators and Across School Kāhui Ako Leaders

Schools may belong to a cluster as part of a Ministry of Education initiative professional learning community. A cluster coordinator must track and report on cluster progress. They may wish to create a collection of common tests for groups across cluster schools and report across the cluster. Cluster coordinators can view cluster performance as a whole or by school.

Researchers

A researcher appointed by the Ministry of Education or a university, may wish to collect specific data or monitor general progress or achievement for a specific purpose. Researchers may need to create collections of common tests or track and report on student progress across multiple schools.

Temporary External Coordinators

There are circumstances where it may be useful to gain temporary access to data from multiple schools. For example, a Year 9 Dean may wish to create an entry test for year 8 students to sit before they enter high school the following year.

A temporary External Coordinator who has another e-asTTle login (for example, as a teacher) must arrangements to disable the other login while the External Coordinators role is active.

External Coordinator permission 

To grant or remove access permission for External Coordinators, you must be set up with an e-asTTle School Leader role.

Setting up external coordinator role  

1. Select "Maintenance" from left menu. 
2. Select "Permission for External Coordinators" link. 
3. Add an External Coordinator by selecting their name in the left-hand box. Select “Add”.
4. Remove External Coordinators by selecting their name in the right-hand box. 
5. Select "Remove" or "Remove All" to remove permission for all External Coordinators. 
6. Select "Save". 
7. A confirmation box will appear. Select "OK" to confirm, otherwise select "Cancel".

Image description: Screenshot of Permission for External Coordinators showing how to add and remove external coordinators. The left hand side shows a list of Selected External Coordinators. In the middle are 4 buttons showing; Add All, Add, Remove, and Remove All. External coordinators are listed in a scroll down menu on the right hand side. At the bottom of the image is the “Cancel” and “Save” buttons.

Test assigned to multiple schools

If the test was assigned to multiple schools, the External Coordinator can mark the students from schools provided that they still have access to them. 

If permission is removed and then returned to the External Coordinator, they can again access things like reports for tests the school created. 

If they go to the “Mark Test” screens, the test assignments that reload will be for the students from the school who originally revoked the permissions.

e-asTTle access for Schools and External Coordinators is maintained via the Education Sector Logon (ESL).

Application Process

Apply for an ESL account (username & password for accessing e-asTTle). e-asTTle access is maintained via the Education Sector Logon.

Education Sector Logon (ESL) | Applications & Online Systems

Once the applicant is set up with ESL, they can proceed to request permission to become an External Coordinator.

To set up External Coordinator access, download and complete the e-asTTle External Coordinator Request form. A separate e-asTTle Access Request Form (External Coordinator) must be completed for each person requiring access to e-asTTle as an External Coordinator.

See Materials that come with this resource to download the e-asTTle External Coordinator Request Form - ESL 06 (March 2023) (.pdf).

Please ensure:

• All mandatory fields have been completed (those fields marked with an *)
• Forms have been signed by the applicant and appropriate authoriser.

After you have completed the request form, submit it to the Education Service Desk at [email protected]

Once your form has been approved and processed, the Education Service Desk will e-mail your External Coordinator account details (User ID, Password, and other key information).

Logging in to e-asTTle

Login to e-asTTle – via the Education Sector Logon (use the "Teacher login" option).

The e-asTTle system will now recognise you. At this point, you cannot access any school data. However, your name will be loaded and available in the External Coordinator list for schools to select.

Approach the various schools you will be working with to gain permission to access their data. Seek out e-asTTle staff who have the School Leader role as they can provide you access to their school’s e-asTTle data.

Once they have completed the process, the next time you log in to e-asTTle you will have access to that school’s e-asTTle data.

e-asTTle users with the School Leader role can enable or disable permission at any time.

What happens when an External Coordinator is removed?

When a school removes an External Coordinator, they will lose access to some reports, data, and tests. They will still have access to data based on the tests they created.

For example, the External Coordinator can:

• see assignments created to groups across multiple schools (including the school that revoked access to the EC).
• Bring up on “Manage Test Assignments” the list of students that will include the students from school/s that revoked access to the EC.
• Make further test assignments to groups they previously created (including students from school/s that revoked access to the EC)
• Access reports sat by students in the school that removed access (but only for tests created by the EC).

They cannot access reports for tests created by the school that removed the External Coordinators permissions, or mark test assignments for students that belong to that school, even if the test were created by the External Coordinator. If a school removes you as an External Coordinator, then reinstates you, access resumes as before.

To view which school’s data you can access:

1. Login to e-asTTle.
2. Select "Manage Students" from the left-hand menu.
3. Select "Schools You Can Access".
4. You will see the current list of schools you have permission to access.

External Coordinators are strongly encouraged to review all e-asTTle support material.

External coordinators can use the e-asTTle training environment to test and highlight various features of e-asTTle in a secure environment ("sandbox").

To access the e-asTTle training environment, please contact the Education service desk at [email protected], to obtain the appropriate ESL account (which is separate and additional to the ESL account obtained in Step 1).

The e-asTTle Training Environment can be accessed from the following pages, depending on the e-asTTle role that you wish to use.

• For teacher, school administrator, and school leader functionality, use e-asTTle training environment for schools.
• For student functionality, use e-asTTle practice for students.

Finding students

In addition to the filters that teachers can use, you can also filter by school. To find students across multiple schools, select the “blank” option from the "By School" drop-down.

Image description: Screenshot of the Manage Student information screen showing various input boxes for student information. The boxes shown are; School, Group, First name, Last name, SMS ID, NSN ID, Year, Ethnicity, Gender, Language at Home, and Password status. All boxes are empty, however Group, Year, Ethnicity, Gender, Language at home and Password status have “All” entered. There is a “Quick help” button at the top right hand corner of the image. At the bottom of the image are two buttons “Go Back” (highlighted) and “View". In the middle of the image is a small box ticked with the text “Exclude login info for faster text".

Select using multiple filters. Searching by "School" only could create a long list, especially if it is a large school. Also, a School-only search could slow down e-asTTle, which could affect other users.

A blank SMS ID indicates that the student exists in multiple schools.

Managing groups

You can manage your groups much like a teacher can. That is, you can view, edit, or delete the groups you created.

See e-asTTle – Managing student data for more information. 

In addition to creating groups within a school, you can create “Between Schools” groups.  This could be a "group of groups" or a combination of groups from different schools. Use the following steps to do this:

1. Select "Manage Students" from left menu.
2. Select "Add New Group".
3. Enter information in "Group Name" and "Description" fields. Your description should be detailed.
4. Choose the "Select Groups" radio button, then select "Continue".
5. Select, from the "School" drop-down, the school you wish to include.
6. In the "Group" box, select the group you wish to include.  To select multiple groups, hold down the <CTRL> key as you select the groups.
7. Select "Include".
8. Repeat steps 5, 6, and 7 if you wish to include groups from multiple schools.
9. When you have added all the groups you need, select "Save".

If you want to create a group that is made up of groups that you created, select the blank option from the "School" drop-down. 

Creating Tests

You can create a collection of common tests to use across multiple schools. Schools that you have access to will be able to view the tests you created.

If the test was assigned across multiple schools, each school will only have access to their students’ results. Once permission is disabled, schools will no longer be able to see your tests or any reports for their students who sat tests that you created.

See e-asTTle – Creating and Managing Tests for more information on the guidelines for creating effective tests.

Viewing Tests

You can view your tests, tests created by teachers in schools you have access to, and those created by other External Coordinators who share a common school with you.

Your "View Existing Tests" screen has an extra checkbox labelled "My Tests", which will display only the tests you created.

In addition, there is an extra filter for "School". Select the school whose tests you wish to view or select “Other External Coordinator Tests". After that, select "Search".

See e-asTTle – Creating and Managing Tests for more information. 

Conditions for viewing performance by school

Schools will be able to view reports for their students. They will not be able to view reports from other schools.

Between School groups must be created if you wish to use e-asTTle to report across schools. Only external coordinators have access to this functionality.

Tests created by ECs "belong" to the EC. This means that when permission to a school has been removed, the school will no longer be able to see, assign, or mark any tests that were created by an EC. The school, will, however, still be able to access Progress and ILP (Individual Learning Pathway) reports via the Student Result Summary for any tests that were created an EC.

Once all tests have been sat and scored, you can access the Tabular Reports for these tests, export them, aggregate them, and create reports as desired.

Deleting Tests

You can only delete your test if the status is Pending or Accepted.  Once your onscreen test has been sat or marks for your paper test have been entered, you will no longer be able to delete that test.

Assigning Tests

This process is the same as for teachers; however, you have a few extra options.

• My Tests check-box – selecting this option displays the tests that you have created.
• Selecting a school from the drop-down will show all tests created in that school
• Selecting “Other Ext. Coord. Tests” from the dropdown will show all tests created by other ECs who share access to at least one school with you.

When you assign a test to students from multiple schools, each school will only be able to see reports for their own students.

See e-asTTle – Creating and Managing Tests for more information on creating test assignments.

Making Student Exclusions

This process is the same as for teachers. When you assign a test to students across schools, teachers from those schools will be able to make and view student exclusions.

However, once a student is deleted from a school, teachers from that school will not be able to see the deleted student on the Student Exclusions screen.

You will still be able to view and carry out student exclusions for students that have been deleted.

See e-asTTle – Creating and Managing Tests for more information on student exclusions.

Marking Tests

This process is the same as for teachers. See e-asTTle – Marking tests for more information on marking onscreen and paper tests.

Reports

The process to find reports is the same as for teachers. You will need to use extra search filters to help you find tests.

Extra filters:

• “Other Ext. Coord. Tests” – displays all "scored" tests created by other external coordinators where you have at least one school in common.
• Selecting a school – displays all "scored" tests created by teachers in the selected school.
• Selecting “My Tests” – displays all your "scored" tests.
• Selecting “My Tests” and “My Groups” – retrieves a list of all groups created by you who sat your tests.

When you select a group from the Group filter box and click "Search", this will return all scored tests sat by any student who is a member of the selected group.

See e-asTTle – Reports for more information on viewing reports.

Overnight Report Generation

This is the same as for teachers, but External Coordinators are more likely to be generating large reports. See  e-asTTle – Reports for more information on overnight report generation.