The decile ranking system is intended to compensate adequately schools whose parents cannot afford to make big donations.

However, schools in rich areas are still about $1,000 a year better off for every student despite this Government funding that favours poorer schools, says Dr Cathy Wylie of the NZ Council for Educational Research who has carried out a survey of 177 schools.

A survey of five decile 10 and five decile 1 primary schools by the NZ Educational Institute, quoted by Dr Wylie in a book on inequality to be published next week, found the schools' total budgets averaged $8,653 a student in decile 10 areas but only $7,518 a student in the decile 1 schools.

Another Fund available to schools allows students to sit assessments under special conditions. That could include a room to themselves to avoid distraction, being assisted by a reader-writer, use of braille, rest breaks, or computers.

In 2012, a total of 3418 of the 143,000 pupils who sat NCEA-level exams got special assistance. Private Auckland school King's College, which regularly tops national academic tables, had 180 pupils sitting NCEA exams last year. Of those 44 qualified for special exam conditions.

By comparison, neighbouring school Otahuhu College, which is decile 1 and had four times as many NCEA candidates in 2012, had no SAC applications.

School decile ratings have not been reviewed since the 2006 because the census was delayed two years by the Christchurch earthquake.

The Ministry of Education told the Herald on Sunday that school decile ratings will be reviewed next year and related changes to funding will be applied in 2015.

Source

• New Zealand Herald
• New Zealand Herald
• Stuff
• Image: historic.org.nz

Catholic schools of all kinds dominate the top places in the latest Metro analysis of Auckland schools: boys' schools, girls' schools and co-ed schools; high decile and low decile schools. Wilson says these results are a stark contrast to a generation ago when Catholic schools were often at the bottom of performance standards.

But Waikato University Education professor Martin Thrupp said it was misleading to assume Catholic schools are better.

He says statistically modeling is a very sophisticated task, something that even academics have struggled with and the way Metro does it is "so crude and they're wrong to do it."

"Just because the school is top of the pops in the league tables doesn't necessarily mean it will be right for your child. They might not fit the culture of the school," he said.

"I wouldn't pay it too much attention myself, there's other more rounded forms of information like ERO reports."

The CEO of the New Zealand Catholic Education Office thinks that the Christian faith accounts for the academic success of Catholic schools.

Brother Patrick Lynch says that fundamentally a Catholic school "emphasises spirituality, faith, values, attitude, that builds a culture with the families to provide the youngsters a reason for living.

"Once you get those parameters in place it's easier to concentrate on high expectations - when you've got good leadership in schools you've got a better chance of actually delivering a better set of outcomes."

McAuley High School, a decile one school for girls in Otahuhu, has topped the tables this year. The magazine warns that this is not the same as saying it had the highest proportion of success in exams; it was the school most likely to improve its students' performance in exams

The highest proportion of success in exams according to Metro, belongs to three schools: St Cuthbert's College in NCEA exams, ACG Senior College in the Cambridge exams, and ACG Parnell College in University Entrance.

There are ten deciles and around 10% of schools are in each decile. Decile one schools have the highest proportion of students from low socio-economic backgrounds whereas decile ten schools have the highest proportion of students from high socio-economic backgrounds.