School decile ratings

Do you take school decile ratings into account when choosing one for your child?

We're looking at a house we love but all the schools its zoned for are decile 5 and lower. I dont know if this should influence our decision?

Do schools accept children from outside of their zone?

Having said that there is nothing wrong with the schools nearby to the new place but I have just heard more postive feedback for Campbells Bay primary,,,,

We cant afford a home in an area with higher decile rating schools, so she'll either have to go to one with a lower decile rating or be accepted into a school thats out of zone.

We're in Birkenhead at the moment but cant afford to buy here so are looking at Birkdale.

She's not quite 3 yet so we still have time to get her into a school.

Yeah check out the ERO reports.

I went to a primary school that had a decile rating of 6 and a high school with a rating of 4 yet I managed to get into vet school at uni. Lower decile schools aren't all bad.

We had DSD at a Decile 3 school, and Maya is at a Decile 8, the big difference I've noticed is that at DSD's school there wasn't a lot of "extracurricular" fees like sports etc. whereas at Maya's school they seem to constantly have their hands out for trips, plays at school etc. I don't know if that's coz the lower decile schools get more funding for these things, or just coz at a higher decile school there is the expectation that parents can "afford" these things.

I agree with Lemongirl tho that decile rating isn't always an accurate gauge of how good a school is, a bit like the Plunket "dep" areas that define how many contacts you are funded for - it's based average incomes in the area. We live in a lower decile area (Maya is at school out of zone) but it's not a 'bad' area, there's just a lot of pensioners living here who are on fixed incomes which skews the average.

dont go by the decile - often they are not that accurate anyway - done by the census (which is only every 5 years?)

visit the school and see if it feels right

if a school is zoned - they very rarely will take others

lizandtheboys wrote: Not all schools accept children out of zone, would be worth a quick call to the school office and they'll be able to tell you.  The school I teach at has a closed zone.   Higher decile doesn't mean better school at all.  In fact, the lower the decile the more funding they get lol.   It'd be worth checking out the ERO reports of the schools around you, just do a google search.  Also word of mouth is generally a good indicator - of people who've actually been involved there though, not just "reputation" (my highschool had a bad reputation but was a brilliant school.... it just had the bad rep cos it was lower decile and we had kids from 'poor' areas and lots of islanders and maori).

what she said ...

what i based a lot of my decision around was teachers telling me about the schools, we bought a house this year. so a lot of our decision where to buy was based around area.

Teachers were telling me about staff turnover, how the staff treated relief workers, and these two things made me confident about the school I chose. decile rating was the least of my worries to be honest.

i checked the ERO report, but I talked to a lot of other parents and that was more helpful I thought