School deciles to go

Nikki Kaye announced:

Education Minister Nikki Kaye today confirmed the Government will replace the decile system for schools with targeted funding to better support those students most at risk of not achieving.

“For too long schools have been stigmatised and wrongly judged by their decile number,” says Ms Kaye.

Deciles became a proxy for quality, and they’re not. There are some very good schools in low decile areas and some not so good schools in high decile areas.

“Today I’m announcing that the Cabinet has agreed to replace the decile system with a Risk Index that allows us 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.”

So the more students who are at risk of not achieving, the more funding the school gets. Actually targeting it on need.

“However, I’m pleased to be able to confirm that no school, early learning service or ngā kōhanga reo will see a reduction in their funding as a direct result of this change,” says Ms Kaye.

So existing funding will be grandfathered in. No school will get less.