Annual expenditure per student
New Zealand's annual public and private education expenditure per school student is below the OECD mean.
Date Updated: November 2007
Indicator Description
Annual expenditure on primary and secondary educational institutions per student.
What We Have Found
New Zealand's annual public and private education expenditure per school student is below the OECD mean
Why This Is Important
A quantitative analysis using data from English schools (DfES, 2001) provides some evidence of a positive and statistically significant relationship between capital investment and pupil performance. These findings are consistent with existing research in this field.
Government expenditure per student is of particular importance when the socio-economic status of the student's family or the socio-economic mix of the school community is low. Greater per-student resource is required to overcome barriers to learning associated with access to reference material and resources, information and communication technologies (ICT), and other opportunities linked to cultural capital and educational achievement.
Effective schools require the right combination of trained and talented personnel, adequate facilities, state-of-the-art equipment and motivated students ready to learn. The demand for high-quality education, which can translate into higher costs per student, must be balanced against placing undue burden on taxpayers.
Although it is difficult to assess the optimal volume of resources required to prepare each student for life and work in modern societies, international comparisons of spending on education per student can provide a starting point for evaluating the effectiveness of different models of educational provision.
How We Are Going
Almost one fifth (18.4%) of the New Zealand population was in schooling in 2006 (over 750,000 students). This ratio puts relatively high demands for funding of the schooling sector, compared with other countries with a smaller youth population.
In 2004 New Zealand's annual public and private expenditure on primary and secondary education institutions per student was below the OECD mean across 29 countries.
Annual expenditure on primary and secondary educational institutions per student (2004) 
New Zealand’s education expenditure per primary school student (US$5,190 converted using purchasing power parities for GDP) was 17th out of 29 OECD countries, just ahead of Ireland, but well below Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Expenditure on education per secondary student in New Zealand (US$6,299 converted using purchasing power parities for GDP) was 21st in the OECD.
However, New Zealand’s high performance in reading, mathematics, and science achievement for primary and middle school students, as well as reading, mathematics, and science literacy achievement for senior secondary school students suggests that there are a number of other factors than unit expenditure alone which lead to better student outcomes.
Where To Find Out More
The following indicators, relating to student numbers and expenditure on education, should also be considered:
Education expectancy Total investment in education.
References
Cochrane, D. (2001). Why Education Matters: Race, Ethnicity, and American School-Equity Research. In, W. Hutmacher, D. Cochrane, N. Bottani. (Eds.). In Pursuit of Equity in Education: Using International Indicators to Compare Equity Policies. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
fES (2001). The relationship between capital investment
and pupil performance: An analysis by the United Kingdom. The Journal of
the OECD Programme on Educational Building, OECD, 44, 8-9.
Norton, P., Sanderson, K., Booth, T., & Stroombergen, A. (2000). The effect of school resourcing on educational outcomes. Report to the Ministry of Education, Wellington.