International fee-paying students in primary and secondary schools in New Zealand

Regular Student: A domestic student, who is aged less than 19 years at 1 January of the roll count year. Includes; students in general classrooms and those in special needs units. Excludes; international fee-paying students, NZAID-funded students (prior to 2009), alternative education students and adult students.

International Fee Paying Student: An international student (prior to 2009 these were Foreign Fee Paying students) who meets the full tuition costs on their own or from funds provided to them by sponsors other than the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Students can be studying at a secondary or tertiary level.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade Student: A student on a scholarship from MFAT (previously referred as NZAID students). As of 2009 these students are now part of the domestic count and not included in international fee paying student totals.

Alternative Education Student: A young person aged between thirteen and a half and sixteen years of age who has become alienated from the education system. As they are either unwilling to attend a regular school or schools are unwilling to enrol them in a mainstream setting they attend an Alternative Education Programme.

Adult Student: A domestic student who has continued at a school and is aged 19 years or over on 1 January of the roll count year.

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 1996-2025' under 'Time series data' headline.
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.