What it measures
The Schooling Equity Index (EQI) is a statistical model that estimates the extent to which students at a school face socio-economic barriers that may affect their educational achievement. State and state-integrated schools can be assigned a number from 344 to 569 — a higher number means students at that school face more estimated socio-economic barriers, on average; a lower number means fewer.
Private schools do not receive an Equity Index number.
How it's calculated
The Ministry combines information about students and their circumstances through a statistical model to produce a school-level EQI.
The model draws on anonymised information about students and their circumstances — for example factors like parental education, benefit history, and residential mobility — and combines this information at school level.
KuraData does not calculate the Equity Index itself and does not publish the full underlying formula — that detail belongs to the Ministry of Education's own methodology (linked below).
Why it matters
The Equity Index is used by the Ministry of Education to help target government funding and support towards schools where students face greater socio-economic barriers. It is not a measure of school quality, teaching quality, or academic performance — two schools with very different Equity Index numbers can both be excellent, and the index says nothing about either one's results.
2026 Equity Index bands
These bands describe the relative level of estimated socio-economic barriers among schools — not school quality or student performance. Higher bands indicate higher estimated levels of socio-economic barriers among students, on average. Official ranges, updated annually by Education Counts.
| Band | Range |
|---|---|
| Fewest | 344–402 |
| Few | 403–429 |
| Below Average | 430–448 |
| Average | 449–469 |
| Above Average | 470–493 |
| Many | 494–521 |
| Most | 522–569 |
Our directory, by band
How the 452 schools we track are actually distributed across the 2026 bands — not an official Education Counts figure, calculated live from our own data.
Average EQI by city
Among cities with at least 3 EQI-bearing schools in our directory.
- Wellington 392 avg EQI · 43 schools
- Auckland 432 avg EQI · 31 schools
- Christchurch 436 avg EQI · 31 schools
- Dunedin 435 avg EQI · 29 schools
- Napier 467 avg EQI · 20 schools
- Invercargill 450 avg EQI · 18 schools
- Hastings 479 avg EQI · 17 schools
- Lower Hutt 436 avg EQI · 16 schools