Students involved with the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme in New Zealand
By age, as at 1 July 2025, number of students
| Student age | Number of students |
|---|---|
| 5 | 590 |
| 6 | 1,010 |
| 7 | 889 |
| 8 | 900 |
| 9 | 829 |
| 10 | 882 |
| 11 | 892 |
| 12 | 896 |
| 13 | 863 |
| 14 | 804 |
| 15 | 803 |
| 16 | 770 |
| 17 | 667 |
| 18 | 504 |
| 19 | 391 |
| 20 | 306 |
| 21 | 133 |
Definitions
Students involved with the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme (ORS): verified as having high or very high ongoing special education needs, or they have entered under the ORS extension programme during 2010.
Levels of need: ORS has two levels of need (‘very high needs’ and ‘high needs’). To meet the criteria, students must have
- either ongoing extreme or severe difficulty in any of the listed areas (learning, hearing, vision, physical, language use and social communication)
- or moderate to high difficulty with learning, combined with very high or high needs in any two of of the remaining listed areas (hearing, vision, physical, language use and social communication)
Extension: In 2010 a third 'extension' category was created to include an additional 400 students with moderate-to-high special needs, who were older than nine and had missed out on the ORS by a narrow margin in the past.
For more information
Changes to data collection/processing
In 2020 the source of ethnicity data was changed to ENROL to improve data quality.
Data provided by
Dataset name
Ongoing Resourcing Scheme (ORS): Number of students by time series 2025
Webpage:
https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/statistics/special-education/ongoing-resourcing-scheme
How to find the data
At URL provided, download the file 'Number of ORS students by time series 2005-2025'.
Import & extraction details
File as imported: Ongoing Resourcing Scheme (ORS): Number of students by time series 2025
From the dataset Ongoing Resourcing Scheme (ORS): Number of students by time series 2025, this data was extracted:
- Sheet: Student Age
- Range:
C4:W72 - Provided: 1,449 data points
This data forms the table Education - Students involved with the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme by age 2005–2025.
Dataset originally released on:
November 2025
About this dataset
Dataset provides information on number of students involved with the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme (ORS) as at 1 July. ORS provides support for a very small number of students, with the highest level of need for special education, to help them join in and learn alongside other children at school.