Prior participation rate in early childhood education in New Zealand

Prior participation rates and numbers: It shows many children have regularly attended Early Childhood Education (ECE) in the six months prior to starting school. The prior ECE participation rate is defined as (number who had regularly attended ECE /(number who had regularly attended ECE + number who had not regularly attended ECE))*100. The number of students with unknown prior ECE attendance has been excluded (from both the numerator and denominator) when calculating participation rates.
Ethnic group: The ethnic groups that the child belongs to coded to; European/ Pākehā, Māori, Pacific Peoples, Asian, and Other. Students with unknown ethnicity are not shown separately but are included in the Totals. Students who identify with more than one ethnic group are counted in each group they identified with. Therefore, the number of students in the 'Total' column will generally be less than the sum of the students in each group.
School decile: The school decile of the school that the Year 1 child is enrolled in. It is a measure of socio-economic status, so the higher its value, the better is the socio-economic status of the area where the school is located. In tables with numbers of children attended in ECE by decile, the total also includes those children attending home schooling, the Correspondence School and students whose school campus has no decile information available.
School Equity Index Band: is a statistical model that estimates the extent to which students face socio-economic barriers to achievement at school. Schools are assigned an EQI number from 344 to 569. A higher EQI number indicates that a school has students facing more socioeconomic barriers on average, and a lower EQI number indicates that a school has students facing fewer socioeconomic barriers on average. This is used to enable the Ministry of Education to target resourcing to mitigate the impact of socioeconomic barriers. There are seven School Equity Index Bands, each containing approximately the same number of schools. Schools are placed into a band based on their Equity Index number. There are three School Equity Index Groups formed by collapsing the seven School Equity Index Bands as indicated in the following diagram.

The data relates to all New Zealand citizens or residents who started schooling during the 12 months prior to the end of the month shown.

At URL provided, select the 'Prior participation in ECE (year-end December 2025)' Excel file.
This file was edited by Figure.NZ.

Data on prior-participation show how many children have regularly attended Early Childhood Education (ECE) in the six months prior to starting school.

This data is collected through the Ministry of Education's ENROL system.