Dear Ministry of Education,

Under the Official Information Act 1982, I request information relating to Evaluation Associates’ work on the Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool (SMART).

The Ministry recently corrected its description of Evaluation Associates’ role in OIA GEMS-48260, stating that Evaluation Associates provided contractors to work within the Ministry’s quality-assurance process for SMART Reading, Writing and Mathematics items and to develop SMART guidance materials.

I request:

- Copies of the contract, statement of work, purchase order, variation, contract schedule, or equivalent document describing this work.
- Copies of any staffing schedule, resource plan, contract schedule, deliverables register, invoice summary, or equivalent record identifying the number, roles and period of involvement of Evaluation Associates personnel.
- Copies of any role descriptions, work instructions, deliverables, responsibility matrices, or equivalent records describing whether Evaluation Associates personnel drafted, reviewed, revised, recommended approval of, rejected, or approved SMART assessment items.
- Confirmation of the Ministry role or governance body that retained final approval authority for SMART assessment items.
- Copies of any programme-level quality-assurance framework, criteria, workflow, approval matrix, review template, decision framework, or sign-off template governing Evaluation Associates’ work.
- The titles and copies of SMART guidance materials developed by Evaluation Associates.
- The source document or record relied upon by the Ministry to verify the corrected description provided for GEMS-48260.
- Confirmation of whether the correction affects any other information provided in GEMS-48260.

I am not seeking assessment-item content, completed review records for individual assessment items, personal information about individual contractors, or routine administrative correspondence.

Yours faithfully,

Tyler Craig