Abstract:
The study assesses the impact of school resources on academic outcomes by following a national cohort of upper secondary school students in New Zealand schools from 2006 through to 2008. The academic outcomes were measured by total credits gained in a year and attainment of Level 2 and 3 qualifications in the National Certificate of Educational Achievement, the official secondary school qualification in New Zealand. In total, 144 regression models (72 linear regression models and 72 binary logistic regressions) estimated the impact of per student revenue and expenditure on student’s attainment while controlling for a range of individual background and school factors. The main findings suggest that the differences in overall level of school resources and financial management practices of the school have little to no impact on differences in achievement. Thus, differences in levels and uses of school funding are not related to differences in disparities across schools. Further, it is possible that the school funding model distributes resources to schools equitably but that it fails to affect educational disparity.
