Educators hope to see end of decile system in schools
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Loading... - Daniella Chapman
- 13 May 2022
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Ministry of Education released data to 1News which showed 34 schools asked for a decile review last year, and of those, 18 schools dropped deciles, some quite significantly.
Kopane School in Manawatū had the biggest drop, falling five decile points from 8 to 3. This would mean tens of thousands of dollars in extra funding for the school to pay for teachers, more equipment, technology and better resources.
St Patrick’s Primary School in Wellington’s Kilbirnie didn’t have as significant of a drop in its decile rating, but by going from 5 to 3 it means the school gets an extra $65,000 in funding.
That makes a huge difference. We're using this extra money with teacher aides to provide support for the students, we have extra money to buy chromebooks and just so the students can access the education they should be accessing,” said principal Tony Kelly-Smith.
He applied for a decile review because he knew his school community was struggling.
“When I did the review I knew that a lot of our parents had qualifications and were skilled professionals but were unable to have those skills recognised in New Zealand. They were working industriously as cleaners and taxi drivers and with Covid in the last two years there’s been no employment.
One parent said her husband had worked for 12 hours and got 20 bucks as a taxi driver,” he said.
Educators have been calling for the decile system to be thrown out for years.
“The census data that the decile system is being based on is well and truly out of date so we're finding that gap in resourcing is having a really negative impact in schools,” the NZEI President Liam Rutherford said.
“The decile system currently has a number of issues with it, it’s a pretty clunky way doing it because it just looks at criteria of who’s living within the schools communities and I think one of the more worrying things is we've seen the decile rating itself become a proxy out in the public for how good a school is,” he said. Read More...
