Marina Matthews: Current system "inaccurate" - Hekia Parata

The Ministry of Education has confirmed a nationwide recalculation of decile ratings in New Zealand.Photo / Thinkstock

Everyone wants to live in a neighbourhood with good schools. The publication of decile rankings is often seen as an opportunity to find out where the good schools are. But does the decile system really have anything to do with quality?

Decile ratings for schools have been in the pages of the New Zealand Herald following the confirmation by the Ministry of Education of the first nationwide recalculation of decile ratings in several years. One third of New Zealand's 2406 schools dropped in the decile ratings while one third increased their decile rating and one third remained the same.

However, a school is more than just a number and the decile system is more complicated than it appears.

Decile ratings are often thought to be an indicator of how rich or poor a school is or how well a school performs in students' qualification achievement. What decile ratings actually show is the distribution of children from the lowest socio-economic families. For example, decile 1 schools are the 10 per cent of schools that have the highest proportion of children from low socio-economic families; conversely, decile 10 schools are the 10 per cent of schools with the lowest proportion of these children.

There are now 65 decile 10 schools in the Auckland region and 86 decile 1 schools.
Decile ratings affect the amount of operational funding a school receives per student. Decile funding makes up a small proportion of funding for schools. In 2014 the average weighted funding per student was $7055. A decile 1 school will receive around $900 more in targeted funding per student than a decile 10 school which receives no extra funding. The rationale for this extra funding is that students from low decile schools start from a greater position of disadvantage and the funding helps to ensure a more level playing field for all students.

Any decrease in funding by changing decile occurs in two stages; funding is decreased by half of the total decrease this year and then is reduced further in 2016 to the new, higher decile, level of funding. This can have a negative impact on schools and their communities as the operations grant provides funds for resource teachers for learning and behaviour issues, reading recovery and social workers in schools among a myriad of other costs.

It is often argued that the bluntness of the decile system is felt in mid-decile schools where a significant portion of students are from lower socioeconomic families but the schools are not eligible for the full funding that a decile one school receives. There can also be concerns about not having an affluent community that supports the school through donations.

Before the current recalculation, decile ratings were unchanged for seven years because the Census was delayed by the Christchurch Earthquake. Schools can apply to have their rating changed if they believe there has been a significant change in their community, for example, a major local employer has closed. So the system is responsive to change, for example, some 160 schools applied for a review of their decile rating after the recent recalculation, 85 of these schools were successful in having their decile rating lowered while 75 remained the same.

There have been moves in the past to review the decile system with a view to replacing it with a different system for allocating funding, and recently the Minister for Education Hekia Parata said that the current system was "inaccurate". However, there are no definite plans to review the system at present.

While the decile system will be continue to be part of educational funding for the near future, the numerical rating is not an accurate picture of how well a school is performing or the quality of the education a school provides. Or how good the neighbourhood is.

Marina Matthews is a partner at Chen Palmer, public and employment law specialists. She specialises in education law and public policy.