Our Data & Methodology
How BoundFor works with school data
BoundFor is an independent New Zealand platform built on official government education data. This page explains exactly where every number comes from, how often it updates, where AI is involved, and what we deliberately choose not to do. If you cite BoundFor — as a parent, journalist or researcher — this is the page that backs it up.
Our principles
Three rules we don't break
Official sources only
Every school statistic on BoundFor traces back to a named government source — the Ministry of Education, the Education Review Office (ERO), or the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) — or is clearly labelled where it doesn't (for example, commute times from Google's routing service). We don't publish estimates dressed up as data.
No school pays to be here
No school pays to appear on BoundFor, to rank higher, or to look better than the school next to it. There is no advertising from schools, and money never touches school data. The one commercial placement on the site — a paid local real-estate agent panel shown on some school pages and at the top of purchased reports — has no effect on any school's data, ordering or presentation. What one family sees, every family sees.
No public league tables
BoundFor never publishes a ranked list of New Zealand schools — not as a style choice, but because the data doesn't support one. NZQA itself cautions that school-level results used out of context can mislead, and the Equity Index exists precisely because raw results reflect community circumstances as much as school performance. Inside a paid report we order the shortlist you chose against priorities you set — and the academic-results dial defaults to off. The judgement stays where it belongs: with you.
Where our data comes from
Every dataset, named
Here is each dataset that powers the site, what it does, and where it originates.
School directory
School profiles, search and comparisons — roll numbers, school type, authority, co-ed status, Equity Index and contact details for around 2,500 schools.
Source: Ministry of Education, via the official government open-data catalogue (data.govt.nz).
Enrolment zone boundaries
The zone checker, zone maps and in-zone school lists.
Source: Ministry of Education official enrolment-scheme spatial data.
ERO review reports
ERO summaries and quality-area breakdowns on school profiles and reports.
Source: Education Review Office (ero.govt.nz).
NCEA Levels 1–3 and University Entrance results
Academic results inside individual school reports (school-level, 2020–2024).
Source: NZQA, released to BoundFor under the Official Information Act.
Equity Index (EQI)
Socioeconomic context on every school profile.
Source: Ministry of Education, as part of the school directory data.
Commute times
Drive-time estimates in reports.
Source: Calculated via the Google Routes API when your report is generated; stored only as part of your saved report, never redistributed as a dataset.
Curriculum pathways
Cambridge, IB and other qualification-framework badges and filters.
Source: Hand-verified by BoundFor against the official Cambridge International and IB school directories.
School term dates
The term-dates tool.
Source: Ministry of Education.
About our NCEA data: our NCEA and University Entrance data was obtained directly from NZQA through an Official Information Act request (response OC02292), not scraped from third-party league tables. NZQA's release explicitly warns against league-table-style comparison — which is why we present NCEA results inside individual school reports with full context, never as a public league table.
How fresh is it?
Update cadence, honestly stated
Different datasets update at different speeds, and we'd rather tell you exactly which is which than claim everything is live.
School directory (rolls, EQI, contact details)
Synchronised automatically with the Ministry of Education's published data every week. Each sync run uses change-detection and integrity checks, and keeps an audit trail of the records examined.
Enrolment zones
Re-imported as the Ministry of Education publishes updated enrolment-scheme boundaries. Zones genuinely change often — Auckland alone saw around 100 new schemes and 60 changes in three years — which is why every zone result on BoundFor carries a “verify with the school” reminder.
ERO summaries
Generated in reviewed batches as ERO publishes new reports. Coverage is expanding region by region — where a school doesn't yet have a summary, we say so rather than filling the gap with guesswork.
NCEA / University Entrance results
School-level data for 2020–2024, from NZQA's Official Information Act release. Updated when NZQA releases new school-level data.
Commute times
Calculated live at the moment a report is generated.
Where AI is involved (and where it isn't)
How we use AI — with guardrails
In our data pipeline, BoundFor uses AI for one job: turning long, formal ERO review reports into plain-language summaries parents can actually use. Everything else in the pipeline — rolls, zones, EQI, NCEA results, term dates — is structured government data with no AI in the loop.
Quotes are mechanically verified.
Any quoted passage attributed to a real school's ERO report is mechanically checked against the source text. A quote that can't be located in the source is not shown.
A separate AI model cross-examines the first.
Where a judgement is inferred from an older-format report rather than stated outright, a separate verification model checks whether the supporting evidence actually substantiates it.
A human reviews before publication.
Inferred judgements that pass automated verification still don't publish automatically — they are held for human review first.
We label it.
AI-assisted ERO content is marked “Modified by BoundFor Limited” on every page where it appears, as required by ERO's CC BY 4.0 licence — and because you deserve to know what you're reading.
We don't manufacture verdicts.
Early in development we displayed a “confidence” rating derived from how detailed each ERO report was. We removed it, permanently, when we realised it could read as a quality verdict ERO never made. If a metric can mislead, it goes.
AI summaries can omit findings, simplify nuance, or occasionally misread the source. They are a starting point, not a substitute for the original ERO report on ero.govt.nz. Our summaries are not endorsed by ERO or by any school.
What we deliberately don't do
The lines we've drawn
No public “best schools” rankings.
School-level results reflect community circumstances, cohort make-up and reporting-rule changes as much as teaching quality. A single ranked list hides all of that. We publish context instead.
No decile talk.
Deciles were abolished in January 2023. We use the Equity Index (EQI) that replaced them — and wherever we explain the EQI, on school profiles, in reports and in our guides, we say it measures socioeconomic barriers, not school quality.
No pay-to-play.
No sponsored schools, no paid profiles, no school-supplied marketing copy presented as data.
No cherry-picking.
NCEA Level 1 reporting changed in 2024 (from enrolment-based to participation-based), which can make Level 1 numbers fall while Levels 2–3 hold steady. We flag reporting-rule changes like this wherever they affect a number you're looking at.
Known limitations
What to double-check
We would rather list our limitations than have you discover them.
Zone boundaries can change or contain errors.
Our zone data is a guide based on official Ministry boundaries. Always confirm in-zone eligibility directly with the school before relying on it.
ERO summary coverage is not yet complete.
Where a school doesn't yet have a summary, we show the gap honestly instead of papering over it.
Data has a vintage.
Rolls, zones, ERO findings and results all update through the year. Every paid report states the date its data was assembled — re-check key details directly with the school before a final decision.
Commute times are estimates
They reflect typical conditions, not a guarantee of your actual school run.
Corrections
Spotted an error?
If you find a mistake — a wrong zone boundary, an outdated roll number, an ERO summary that misreads its source — email hello@boundfor.co.nz and we will investigate. Where we got it wrong, we correct it and note the correction. Independence only means something if it comes with accountability.
Licensing, attribution & citing BoundFor
Using our work
NZQA and Ministry of Education data released under the Official Information Act is Crown copyright, reproduced with source attribution and without any reuse-licence claim. Ministry of Education and ERO content on the site is used under CC BY 4.0:
Contains information sourced from the New Zealand Ministry of Education, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0).
Contains information sourced from the Education Review Office, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0). Modified by BoundFor Limited.
Citing BoundFor
Journalists, researchers and bloggers are welcome to cite BoundFor's analysis and tools with attribution. Suggested citation:
Source: BoundFor (boundfor.co.nz), based on official Ministry of Education / ERO / NZQA data.
For data questions, methodology queries or interview requests, email hello@boundfor.co.nz. BoundFor is founder-run — read more about the founder.
This page describes current practice and was last updated on 31 July 2026.
See the methodology in action
Check any New Zealand address against official enrolment zones, or compare schools side by side — free.