Appendix 5: Schools in the evaluation

This evaluation involved 100 schools in which ERO carried out an education review in Term 4, 2013. The types of schools, decile groupings, school localities (urban or rural) and roll sizes of the schools are shown in Tables 1 to 4 below.

The schools sampled were broadly representative of schools nationally, although the resulting sample had proportionately fewer full primary, composite, rural, small and low decile schools.

Table 1: School type

School type	Number of schools in sample	Percentage of schools in sample	National percentage of schools ¹
Full (Years 1-8)	48	48	53
Contributing (Years 1-6)	49	49	40
Composite (Years 1-15)	1	1	3
Special (Years 1-15)	2	2	2
Total	100	100	100

The school types in this sample are representative of national figures. ²

Table 2 School decile group

Decile group³	Number of schools in sample	Percentage of schools in sample	National percentage of schools
Low (1-3)	24	24	29
Medium (4-7)	38	38	39
High (8-10)	38	38	31
Total	100	100	100

The decile groups of the schools in this sample are representative of national figures.

Table 3: Locality

Locality ⁴	Number of schools in sample	Percentage of schools in sample	National percentage of schools
Main urban	> 59	59	49
Secondary urban	6	6	5
Minor urban	8	8	10
Rural	27	27	34
Total	100	100	100

The locality of schools in this sample is representative of national figures.

Table 4: Roll size

Roll size ⁵	Number of schools in sample	Percentage of schools in sample	National percentage of schools
Very small	5	5	11
Small	24	24	25
Medium	37	37	38
Large	21	21	17
Very large	13	13	6
Total	100	100	100

The roll sizes of schools in this sample are not representative of national figures. Very small schools were under-represented, and very large schools were over-represented. This difference was statistically significant.

The national percentage of each school type is based on the total population of schools as at May 2014. For this evaluation, it includes full and contributing primary schools, composite and special schools. This applies to decile, locality and roll size in Tables 2, 3 and 4. Note the figures are rounded to whole numbers, so some totals do not appear to add up to 100 percent.
The differences between observed and expected values in Tables 1-4 were tested using a Chi square test. The level of statistical significance for all statistical tests in this report was p<0.05.
A school’s decile indicates the extent to which a school draws its students from low socio-economic communities. Decile 1 schools are the 10 percent of schools with the highest proportion of students from low socio-economic communities, whereas decile 10 schools are the 10 percent of schools with the lowest proportion of these students.
Based on location categories used by the Ministry of Education and Statistics New Zealand as follows: Main Urban population > 30,000; Secondary Urban 10,000 to 30,000; Minor Urban 1,000 to 9,999; Rural < 1,000.
Roll sizes for full and contributing primary schools are: very small (between 1-30); small (between 31-100); medium (101-300); large (301-500); and very large (500 ). Roll sizes for composite and special schools are: very small (1-100); small (101-400); medium (400-800); large (8011500); very large (1501 ).