Phonics Checks 2025 Report now available
15 May 2025
The 2025 Phonics Checks Report is now available on Education Counts and presents a view of Phonics Checks achievement and progress in Terms 1 – 4, 2025.
Phonics Checks 2025 results (Education Counts)
The Report is based on 20,096 Phonics Checks results uploaded through the Ministry’s Secure Data Portal (SDP) last year.
Phonics Checks
This is the first annual data set for Phonics Checks and represents 35 per cent of all primary and composite schools.
The overall 2025 results show:
- 53 per cent of students were at or above expectations at 20-weeks, and,
- 39 per cent of students were at or above expectations at 40-weeks.
Hihira Weteoro
In 2025, a total of 331 Hihira Weteoro results were submitted to the Ministry.
These results will not be summarised in an annual report as they do not
provide a representative picture of mokopuna achievement and progress.
Looking ahead
From Term 1, 2026, all schools and kura are required to administer Phonics Checks and Hihira Weteoro. Some kura with specified boards have until January 2027 to implement Hihira Weteoro and are encouraged to use the tools in 2026 if they wish.
For the 2026 reporting year, we anticipate that Phonics Checks and Hihira Weteoro will be administered largely through the online tools.
Future annual datasets will enable consistent monitoring of student performance over time and will support the identification of long-term trends of student progress and achievement.
The online tools are intended to remove practical barriers to data-sharing and provide the Ministry access to larger data sets of student results. This will offer a clearer view of achievement patterns to better identify areas of success and where we need to focus our collective efforts to support improving student and mokopuna outcomes.
The online tools can be accessed at the following link:
Phonics checks and Hihira Weteoro (Phonicschecks.education.govt.nz)
Supporting guidance can be found at: