ERO chief review officer Graham Stoop announced yesterday school decile ratings would no longer appear on ERO reports, in a bid to quash the stereotype that a school's decile equals its performance.
However, Otago Primary Principals' Association president Brent Caldwell believed the removal of decile ratings would make little difference to public perception of a school's performance.
"Successful schools are not defined by their decile rankings," he said.
"Schools have long had to contend with deciles being used, either as a point of difference or deficit for years, and one could expect that with decile ratings being removed from ERO reports, other ways of drawing comparisons and seeing differences will emerge.
"The introduction of the National Standards and the looming prospect of ill-defined league tables is one example."
Otago Secondary Principals' Association president Brent Russell said ERO's decision was welcomed by the secondary sector.
"Historically, there has been some confusion in the wider community regarding a perceived correlation between a school's performance and the decile rating, which of course is not correct.
"The decile rating is simply part of the funding formula that the Ministry of Education uses to allocate resources to schools."
Dr Stoop said it was hoped removing the decile rating from ERO's reports would help correct this misconception.
ERO's reports were designed to give parents an assessment of the quality of education provided by schools for learners.
"We have decided that decile has no part to play in our reports."
The inclusion of the decile rating in ERO reports was a historical one dating back several years, he said.
The move not to include decile ratings takes effect for reports published by ERO from the beginning of term four, 2012.
Reports already published would not have their decile rating retrospectively removed, he said.
