Helping New Zealand kids — and the adults who care about them — say “I like maths.”
Maz is a Wellington dad with a web developer background. He wrote the book to help his two drawing-mad kids develop a positive attitude toward maths. It started as scribbles on paper and grew into a proper book.
Fun Math 4 Kids, Volume 1 is an activity and story book for ages 6+. It combines maths exercises with drawing, code-cracking, and a fantasy adventure featuring a character called Lindy on a quest. It’s designed for home play, not homework — no answer pages, no pressure, no performance anxiety.
The core belief: maths anxiety is learned, not innate. Kids who feel capable and curious about numbers carry that confidence into secondary school and beyond.
Get the book ↗Writing the book started conversations with other parents and teachers. A recurring question kept coming up: “How are NZ kids actually doing in maths?” The answer was surprisingly hard to find. The data exists — NZQA publishes it, TIMSS tracks it internationally — but it’s buried in spreadsheets and PDFs.
This site pulls that public data together and makes it explorable. Which groups of students are falling behind? How does New Zealand compare internationally? What changed after the 2024 NCEA reform? These are questions that matter for real kids in real classrooms.
It’s not an official government resource. It’s one person’s attempt to make important public data legible. If you find it useful — or find something wrong — please get in touch.
Everything on this site comes from public NZ government and international research datasets. Here’s where it comes from:
NZQA Secondary Statistics
NCEA attainment by ethnicity, region, equity group, and gender. 2015–2024.
nzqa.govt.nz ↗TIMSS International Study
NZ Year 5 maths scores since 1995. International comparison across 58 countries.
timss2023.org ↗NMSSA Reports
National monitoring of Year 4 and Year 8 students. 2013, 2018, and 2022 cycles.
nmssa.otago.ac.nz ↗Curriculum Insights
Percentage meeting curriculum benchmarks at Year 3, 6, and 8. 2023–2024.
curriculuminsights.otago.ac.nz ↗Built and maintained by Maz Hermon. Questions, corrections, or just want to say hi?