Should deciles go?

Stuff reports:

Parents’ misuse of decile ratings has inflamed racial and social class stigma in schools, sparking a call for a major overhaul of the funding system, a new report claims.

The Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) paper, produced for the union’s annual conference next month, outlines several criticisms of the decile system.

It recommends a new model in which each school is funded based on an individual socio-economic profile, rather than a decile number.

That sounds well worth considering. You need a funding formula of some sort, but the deciles have become a simplistic proxy for quality – which they are not.

The different in funding by decile is huge:

The decile funding examples below are based on a secondary school with a roll of 1000.

Decile 1: $979,884.69

Decile 2: $699,354.69

Decile 3: $435,034.69

Decile 4: $266,984.69

Decile 8: $107,354.69

Decile 9: $85,324.69

Decile 10: $52,734.69–

But note that this is only around 13% of their operational funding. However it does mean that a decile 10 school need to fund-raise an additional $920,000 or $920 per pupil to get the same funding as a decile 1 school.