Students enrolled in primary and secondary schools in New Zealand

The decile assigned to the school. Students from low socio-economic communities face more barriers to learning than students from high socio-economic communities. Schools that draw their roll from these low socio-economic communities are given greater funding to combat these barriers. The mechanism used to calculate and allocate this additional funding is most often known as school deciles.

Schools are assigned a socio-economic score based on five census derived socio-economic factors. The 10 percent of schools with the lowest scores are considered decile 1 schools, the next 10 percent of schools are considered decile 2 schools, etc. Decile 1 schools have the highest proportion of low SES students.

Schools can and do make amendments to their roll data outside of a collection period if they notice mistakes that affect their funding entitlements, often brought about by audit visits. These changes will not be reflected in the roll data that has been published.

Included school types are: Full Primary, Secondary, Intermediate, Composite, Restricted Composite, Correspondence School, Special School, Contributing, Teen Parent Unit.

Decile was replaced with the Equity Index for funding purposes in 2023. 2022 is the last year when Decile is used for reporting purposes.

At URL download Excel spreadsheet titled 'Time Series Data for Trend Analysis 1996-2024'.
Figure.NZ edited the file for processing purposes.

The Ministry of Education carries out statistical collections (roll returns) from New Zealand schools at different times during the year.
The data reported here is based on the 1 July roll returns since it provides detailed information on age and ethnicity for trend analysis.

The Ministry uses the collected data in a number of ways: to fund and staff schools; to support policy analysis, development and decision making; to monitor the outcomes of the New Zealand education system; and for national and international reporting purposes.