The decile system will be replaced by a new stock index from January. Why was the change necessary and what does it mean for your local school?
What is changing?
As of 2023, each school will have an Equity Index (EQI) number ranging from 344 to 569. The higher the number, the more barriers students face in their learning performance. The index replaces deciles, where schools were divided into 10 groups – decile 1 was the most disadvantaged, decile 10 the least.
Equity indices are calculated based on 37 socioeconomic factors, including everything from impermanence and parental benefit history to parents’ education level, all with different weights. The full list of factors has not been published, but extensive analysis has shown that the factors are the most predictive of educational outcomes.
Each school’s number determines its share of its own funding pool, which it can use to address educational disadvantage among its students. Previously, $161 million in equity funding was distributed to the country’s 2,500 schools each year, weighted by the lowest deciles. That has now been increased by 50 percent to $236 million.
What was wrong with the old system?
Deciles have been around for nearly 30 years, but are now seen as relatively blunt and flawed. They were based on poverty and deprivation in student neighborhoods, not the students themselves, and were revised only every five years – stock indices will be updated every year.
Department of Education operations chief Sean Teddy said the Department now had access to much better data and understood the factors that influenced performance the most.
It had taken six years to develop the EQI, which was first proposed by the previous national government. The education sector and Statistics NZ have been closely involved, the offices of the Privacy Commissioner and the Ombudsman were consulted and the model was independently assessed last year.
Will schools be affected?
It is feared that some schools will protest if they lose money, but Teddy said very few schools would be in that position.
“We have made transitional arrangements for the small number of schools that will receive less funding,” he said.
No school would get less equity funding per student next year, and those losing funding would do so gradually so they had time to adjust. The extra $75 million a year should also ensure that few schools lose money, even if their position relative to other schools has changed, and a smoothing process means schools won’t have to undergo major funding changes if their EQI of year has changed. to year changes.
Former Edgewater College principal Allan Vester, who led the sector reference group for the ministry, said great care was taken to make sure schools understood the index before finding out in September how much money they would get.
That was because “once you tell schools what the money is, those who get more defend the system, and those who get less are all the time looking for reasons why this isn’t fair,” he said.
How do I find out a school’s EQI number?
Schools discovered their EQI numbers last Friday, and all numbers will be published by the Ministry of Education in the third semester.
Regional data shows that the most deprived schools are on average in Te Tai Tokerau – EQI 506 on average – followed by Tairawhiti (491) and Bay of Plenty (489). Auckland and Canterbury/Chatham Islands have the lowest average EQI of 444, but there will be significant differences within regions.
Why is my school’s EQI number so different from the decile?
Many deciles have not been recalculated in eight years due to poor data quality in the 2018 census, so the composition of the student body may have changed. It is also possible that the decile system did not reflect the true level of student backlog.
Schools will not know each other’s numbers until they are published, although they do know where they stand in general. Few schools were willing to tell the Herald their EQI number at this stage, but two decile 9 schools—Macleans College and Whangaparāoa College—had EQIs of 390 and 463, respectively, suggesting that despite their shared decile, they are in fact very different cohorts served.
Whangaparāoa principal Steve McCracken said he wasn’t sure what his school’s number meant, but assumed it would bring in more money. “I’d like to know the formula and calculations behind it.”
Vester expected some principals to protest if they found their EQI number was lower than a school down the road, especially if they used to get the same funding.
Actually, Vester said, “what wasn’t fair is that you got the same amount — because this more accurate model now shows that your students’ need isn’t as great as you thought.”
How is student data kept private?
The data comes from Statistics NZ’s Integrated Data Infrastructure, which pulls information about every New Zealander from a variety of government agencies. The data is anonymized and there are strict privacy restrictions on who can use it and how. That means the ministry doesn’t know students’ identities when it’s working out their deprivation rate, and neither does schools.
“You can’t infer anything about a student based on an EQI number,” the ministry says.
In some very small schools it might be possible to make assumptions about the backgrounds of students based on the EQI number; the figures of those schools are not published.
How is the EQI used to combat deprivation?
Due to privacy rules, equity financing cannot be linked to a particular student. Instead, schools are expected to use the money to fight backlog across the school — for example, by paying for more social services or hiring teachers.
Vester said the ministry took a “very trusting approach” with no obligation on schools to disclose how they were using the money. “But you would think it would be high on the board’s agenda. We have extra money. Where are we going to make a difference for our children?”
The index will also be used to allocate other resources previously allocated by deciles, such as the professional development of directors, and the Department is working with other agencies that use deciles – such as the Department of Health – to ensure that they understand the new system when allocating resources such as school nurses.
Free school lunches are also up for review now that the EQI has been finalized, as they were calculated from an earlier version of the index. Vester said no school that has already received free lunches would lose it, but more schools would likely come.
Is the EQI set in stone?
The ministry may change or refine the EQI as New Zealand collects more data on its citizens. But because the index was started by National, Vester said it was unlikely to be scrapped, regardless of who was in government.
There is also some concern that equity funding will be spread too thin – it will be less than 4 percent of total school funding, compared to the OECD average of 6 percent. Vester shared that concern but was optimistic that funding would increase in future budgets.
Can the stock index be abused?
Concerns have long been raised about the decile system’s shortcomings – from brokers using “high decile” as shorthand for quality, to rankings comparing Commission results within deciles.
That should be more difficult with the EQI, which Vester noted had more of a clock curve, with most schools clustered toward the center. Because there are so many socio-economic factors at play, schools with identical EQI numbers can serve very different students – the index just doesn’t show that.
And he said parents shouldn’t use the EQI to decide where to enroll their child. Instead, they should visit a school and look at the emergency response reports to get a better idea if they did a good job.
“The EQI is in no way a reflection of the quality of the school,” he said. “Actually, with [a higher EQI] number has some important advantages because it has extra money to spend on its children.”
He also opposed listing schools based on their EQI, believing it could harm the schools serving the most disadvantaged students.
“Parents worry and then they don’t send their kids to those schools and that’s how we end up in a downward cycle of despair,” he said. “That’s exactly why we wanted more money to be spent so that the schools serving children with the most needs can do such a wonderful job that there’s no reason to send their children anywhere but the local school.”