The Otago Museum is continuing to far exceed Ministry of Education-funded targets for its Learning Experiences Outside the Classroom programme.
Figures tabled at a recent Otago Museum Trust Board meeting show actual school pupil participation in the museum's LEOTC programmes as 5342 for the first three months of the financial year, until September 30.
This is far above 421, which is the quarterly equivalent of the overall annual official ministry target, for that period.
However, the actual numbers include multiple programmes attended by the same class on the same museum visit - which is excluded from the ministry's official criteria for visit counting.
Museum director Dr Ian Griffin has also previously said that record numbers of young people educated through the LEOTC programmes have highlighted the need to think further about the underlying funding.
The ministry has funded the museum to meet targets of between 1500 and 4500 children to be educated annually through the LEOTC programme in the 2018-19 financial year, which ended in July.
However, museum education manager Kate Timms-Dean has reported that more than 13,000 pupils were educated in that period, far exceeding the official targets.
Dr Griffin has said the museum really appreciated the funding it received, and he was pleased the ministry planned to review aspects of the funding system over the next couple of years.
The demand for LEOTC services far exceeded the funding received, so "the museum ends up supporting the demand using our own resources'', he said.
Educating young people through the museum, including some who had travelled long distances from rural areas by bus, was of "tremendous importance'', and could prove life-altering.
There was a strong case for more government support for the museum in this case, he said.
