Rotorua principals have had a mixed reaction to the Government's announcement it will replace the decile school funding system with one that targets money according to how many "at-risk" children schools have.
John Paul College principal Patrick Walsh said he wanted to congratulate former Education Minister Hekia Parata for being bold enough to initiate the change.
"Targeted funding is more appropriate. [Being at-risk] is not the fault of the child and the additional resources and funding will be a helping hand for those children."
Mr Walsh described the decile system as "a blunt instrument for measuring poverty in schools".
"Unfortunately it has a become a de facto measure of the quality of education, which is not the case. Low decile schools achieve amazing things and higher decile schools can always perform better...parents tend to use it as a cruel measure of a school's worth which is totally unfounded."
Education Minister Nikki Kaye announced the school funding system changes. Photo/File
Education Minister Nikki Kaye said the new system announced today would allow the government to "better target funding to schools with children and young people most at risk of not achieving due to disadvantage".
"We will also be replacing the equity index used to allocate disadvantage funding in early childhood education with the Risk Index."
The current decile system is based on the area from which a school draws its students.
Mr Walsh said he thought it would be a "complex" change but good for the New Zealand education system.
"A lot of work will have to go into making the system work...I see it as a positive that no school will lose funding. Even high deciles schools like us [John Paul College is decile 7] have students from poor communities, they need targeted assistance."
Western Heights Primary School principal Brent Griffin said he thought the current decile system worked well for his school. Photo/File
Principal of the decile 1 Western Heights Primary School, Brent Griffin, said he had been "very aware" of the proposal to change the system.
"We haven't been made aware of the ins and outs yet so I can't ascertain if it will work in our favour. The concern is will it work in our favour or not."
He said he thought the decile system worked "very well" for his school, but this was possibly not the case for higher decile schools.
"It may be making the system more equal... as long as what we are doing can continue running. There is an absolute need to prop up the bottom of the scale as long as the funding supports these kids but we need to see [how the new system] will go."
Bob Stiles, principal of decile 2 Owhata Primary School, said he had not had a "proper look" to see how the change would impact his school.
"But if it takes away from the stigma of decile 1 to 10, saying one is better [than the other], this can only be a good thing."
Sunset Primary School principal Niels Rasmussen said he wasn't in a position to discuss the change at the moment, though he "didn't see our funding changing much".
Ms Parata had previously said a statistical "risk" index could target funding in a more fine-grained way by estimating for each student how at risk of educational underachievement they were.
It uses a range of indicators relating to each child, including how old the mother was at their birth, how many siblings the child has, parental income, father's offending history, and the child's ethnicity.
Ms Kaye said for too long schools had been stigmatised and judged by their decile number.
"Children and young people deserve to take pride in their school and we need to better target funding to where the need is greatest to support all children to achieve."
Ms Kaye said the specific factors to be used in the index had not yet been finalised.
"However, I'm pleased to be able to confirm that no school, early learning service or nga kohanga reo will see a reduction in their funding as a direct result of this change. In fact, we expect some will gain significantly."
