Rate My Professor Kristel De Ryck

Kristel De Ryck is the Project Administrator for the Educational Assessment Research Unit (EARU) within the College of Education at the University of Otago, located in Dunedin, New Zealand. In this capacity, she provides administrative support for the unit's initiatives in measuring student progress, achievement, and contextual factors influencing teaching and learning to shape policy and inform classroom practice. EARU was established in 1995 by Professor Terry Crooks and Dr Lester Flockton as the home of the National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP). Between 2012 and 2023, EARU managed the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement (NMSSA), a collaboration with the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) under contract to the Ministry of Education.

De Ryck supports EARU's current project, the Curriculum Insights and Progress Study, launched in 2023. This independent, large-scale assessment study builds on NMSSA and aligns with the New Zealand Curriculum refresh. It involves assessments in literacy, numeracy, English, mathematics, reading, social sciences, and other areas for nationally representative samples of Year 3, 6, and 8 students. The project visits approximately 160 schools annually, engaging over 6,000 students to track progress, monitor trends in performance, explore achievement impacts, and supply data for policymakers, curriculum specialists, schools, and teachers. In the 2023 Technical Report, De Ryck is named as part of the operations team led by Alison Richardson, with Lee Baker, Ruth Barton, Linda Jenkins, and James Rae.