Hidden reality of deciles - Interactive

A comparison of new and old deciles is not useful until the funding numbers are taken into account.

A Herald data analysis shows how much funding has changed for each school in the country.

This analysis reveals that the schools from decile one to four could see massive funding changes, even if the ratings for the schools haven't changed.

This renders the simple decile to decile comparison meaningless, particularly for lower deciles - where most of the funding is directed.

For example, the decile four Mt Roskill Grammar in Auckland has seen its funding increase by over $67K - despite no change in its decile rating.

Similarly, Frankton School in Hamilton saw its funding decrease by over $37K while its rating remained at decile 3.

A data table published below allows readers to explore all the 312 schools for which decile rating hasn't changed but these schools have had a 'step change', according to the Ministry of Education classification.

A 'step change' is further division of the lower four deciles into three deciles each. Thus, creating 12 sub-classifications at these deciles.

A school with 'step A' classification at decile 1 gets $905.81 per pupil whereas a school with 'step C' classification at the same decile gets $731.30.

The table below shows the breakdown of the targeted funding, including the 'step classification'.

The above variation means that despite the decile rating remaining stagnant - the funding has changed and in some cases, drastically.

The largest such increase is for decile one Southern Cross Campus in Auckland which saw an increase of $161K in funding, while the largest decrease of $129K happened for decile two Hasting Boys' High School.

The interactive map allows readers to see each school in the country.

How the funding figure was calculated

The Ministry of Education spreadsheet provides the per pupil funding for new deciles, along with the total rolls.

It also provides breakdown for career and special education grants for each decile.

The above figure was arrived at by taking all these into account. The career grants were only taken into account using roll for year 9 and above.

The base price for special education was not added to the total since it didn't affect the funding difference.

A separate spreadsheet is published here - for readers interested in carrying out further analysis.

If you've further comments or suggestions regarding the new decile data, please get in touch.

Luis Apiolaza(@zentree) has done some back of the envelope calculations on the difference between the amount of funding. Read the full blog post here. The two scatterplots from the post are republished below -

Change of funding per student per year (NZ$) on size of the school (number of students)

Change of funding per student per year (NZ$) on size of the school (number of students).

Change of funding per school per year (thousands of NZ$) on school size (number of students).

Change of funding per student per year (NZ$) on size of the school (number of students).