Auckland secondary schools have admitted manipulating their school zones to keep out children from poor neighbourhoods.
Fulbright scholar University of Illinois Associate Professor Chris Lubienski has carried out research on New Zealand's school zones, and last year found that 36 of the 49 secondary school zones in Auckland did not match their immediate area.
In most of those 36 cases, zones were drawn to include affluent neighbourhoods and exclude poor ones, Prof Lubienski told Radio New Zealand.
Some principals admitted they zoned their schools that way deliberately, while one told Prof Lubienski she removed some students' names from her school's out-of-zone enrolment ballot.
Prof Lubienski believes the schools are manipulating their zones to get a high decile rating - which many parents wrongly believe is a proxy for the quality of a school.
Decile rankings depend on the socio-economic circumstances of communities, with decile one the lowest and decile 10 the highest.
Ministry of Education figures show there were 60,000 Pakeha children attending decile one, two and three schools in 2000, and now they are half that number.
Principals' Association president Patrick Walsh says the only credible reason appears to be "white flight" from lower decile schools.
Prime Minister John Key last week raised the possibility of the Ministry of Education creating school "league tables" for primary schools to give parents real data showing the quality of schools, instead of wrongly using the decile system.
NZN