School Equity Index Bands and Groups Data Services

This page explains what the School Equity Index Bands and Groups are and provides background for interpreting data and reporting that uses these bands and groups.

Latest Update: March 2024

What are School Equity Index Bands and Groups?

One of the responsibilities of the Ministry of Education is to report on the state of education in New Zealand. Socioeconomic reporting helps us understand how well we are serving all our learners across the socioeconomic spectrum.

Our socioeconomic reporting uses School Equity Index Bands and Groups. These are two ways of grouping schools into broad socioeconomic categories. These categories estimate the extent to which, on average, students at a school face socioeconomic barriers that could get in the way of their school achievement.

School Equity Index Bands and Groups are derived from the The Schooling Equity Index (EQI). The Schooling Equity Index is a statistical model that estimates the extent to which students face socio-economic barriers to achievement at school. Schools are assigned an EQI number from 344 to 569. A higher EQI number indicates that a school has students facing more socioeconomic barriers on average, and a lower EQI number indicates that a school has students facing fewer socioeconomic barriers on average. This is used to enable the Ministry of Education to target resourcing to mitigate the impact of socioeconomic barriers.

There are seven School Equity Index Bands, each containing approximately the same number of schools. Schools are placed into a band based on their Equity Index number. There are three School Equity Index Groups formed by collapsing the seven School Equity Index Bands as indicated in the following diagram.

While School Equity Index Bands contain approximately the same number of schools, those schools with higher socioeconomic barriers to achievement tend to be smaller which means that School Equity Index Bands do not contain similar numbers of students. School Equity Index Groups contain different numbers of both schools and students.

School Equity Index Bands and Groups are only useful for aggregate reporting (i.e., reporting that summarises data on many schools). Aggregate reporting helps us understand trends across the whole schooling system. Educational statistics vary significantly for individual schools within these categories and the Band or Group that a school is placed in is not an indicator of the school’s quality.

Equity Index Bands and Groups Ranges

Schools are placed into bands and groups based on their Equity Index number. The range of Equity Index numbers used for each band and group is detailed in the following spreadsheet.

Technical Notes

1. Not all schools are assigned an Equity Index Band or Group

The following schools do not have an Equity Index Band or Group:

  • All private schools (these schools do not have an Equity Index number).
  • Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu (the unique nature of this school means that it is inappropriate for inclusion within an Equity Index Band or Group).
  • Schools which are assigned a notional Equity Index number. These include Teen Parent Units, Activity Centres, Regional Health Schools, some specialist schools, and a small number of very small schools. These schools are assigned the maximum Equity Index number to reflect either the particular challenges unique to those settings, and/or limitations on data availability.
2. Analysis with Equity Index Bands and Groups

The Equity Index is derived from a statistical model of educational attainment. When using Equity Index Bands and Groups for socioeconomic analysis, it should be noted that:

  • Ethnicity is the only variable used in the model underlying the Equity Index that is also regularly used in data releases. Care should be taken when analysing data disaggregated by both ethnicity and School Equity Index Band or Group. In this situation, the importance of ethnicity could be underestimated because ethnicity is also a component of the Equity Index.
  • The design of the Equity Index means that average attainment levels will almost certainly differ between Equity Index Bands. However, the extent of these differences can indicate the degree to which socioeconomic factors relate to attainment.
3. Equity Index Bands and Groups will be updated annually

The Equity Index is updated annually. This means that the Equity Index Number, Band and Group assigned to a school can change from year to year. The Ministry uses the same Equity Index for funding and reporting on a given year; the Equity Index for 2023 funding is used to report on data from the 2023 calendar year, the Equity Index for 2024 funding is used to report on data from the 2024 calendar year, etc.

4. Time Series Reporting

While the Equity Index Bands and Groups will be introduced for socioeconomic reporting on schools for data from 2023 and beyond, in some situations it is informative to compare data from 2023+ with earlier years. The Equity Index and School Decile are different socioeconomic measures and are not directly comparable. To allow comparison, the Ministry uses the Equity Index for 2023 funding with education data from 2019-2022. This allows the Ministry to extend time-series that use the Equity Index by up to four years prior to the introduction of the index itself.