The school decile ranking system is set to be dropped from Education Review Office (ERO) reports to stop it being misused to rate schools' performances.
Decile rankings depend on the socio-economic circumstances of communities, with decile one the lowest and decile 10 the highest.
However, the ranking system is believed to be causing a drop in the number of Pakeha children attending schools in poorer areas, with parents wrongly assuming decile rankings indicate how a school is performing.
ERO chief review officer Dr Graham Stoop says there has been confusion about the purpose of the decile rating and what it actually means.
"The decile rating system is a mechanism used by the Ministry of Education to make funding available to schools. Too often it is seen as a rating of the quality of the education which a school provides and this is simply not correct," he said.
Dr Stoop says ERO's reports are designed to give parents an assessment of the quality of education provided by schools.
"We have decided that decile has no part to play in our reports," he said.
The decision follows the government's announcement earlier this month that new school achievement data will be published online but there won't be "league tables" that allow comparisons to be made.
From September 30, information including data from the new national standards, along with Education Review Office reports, schools' annual reports and NCEA statistics will be posted on a website.
The data for the first 12 months won't all be in the same format but parents will be able to see how their school is performing, Education Minister Hekia Parata says.
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