Race based funding

National has calculated that more than $6 million of school funding would be reallocated if race based funding was removed from the decile system.

This is a simple issue – if one already is calculating funding needs based on socio-economic data such as income, there is no need to give a school more money because they have more Maori students. A poor pakeha student should attract just as much money as a poor Maori student.

There is also a wider debate to be held on whether the decile system is given too much weighting in funding. IIRC a decile 10 school gets around half the operational funding of a decile 1 school.