International Student Levy

This levy applies to international fee-paying students enrolled at state or state-integrated schools. The levy does not apply to overseas students with domestic status (for example exchange students, New Zealand residence visa holders), New Zealand Aid (NZAID) programme students.

It is each board's responsibility to ensure their school's data in ENROL is accurate because the International Student Levy (ISL) uses data in ENROL to calculate the ISL allocation in Pourato.

• Calculating the International Student Levy
• Timing for the International Student Levy
• International student groups

Calculating the International Student Levy

For each international fee-paying student, the number of enrolled weeks is multiplied by a weekly rate to calculate the levy amount. We use data from ENROL to calculate this, so it is important to keep ENROL up to date.

The levy is calculated per trimester, which means your levy amounts are spread over the year.

For each trimester, we will let your school’s ENROL contact person know of the deadline for ensuring ENROL is up to date ahead of the levy’s calculation commencing. It is a requirement for you to inform the Ministry of any fee-paying international students who have attended your school, as per the Education and Training Act 2020, and ensure that this information is correct.

The levy will be final as of the deadline date. Please note: refunds will not be provided in cases where the issue is due to your school not ensuring ENROL data is correct.

International Student Levy rates

The rates for the ISL are published with the operational funding rates.

Although the levy rates don’t change annually, the levy is occasionally updated as part of a review process. If this occurs, schools will be notified in advance.

Example ISL calculation

Timing for the International Student Levy

The levy is debited (recovered) from your Quarterly operational funding instalment and published in Pourato.

Pourato

The International Student Levy and Export Education Levy are both calculated, deducted, and published in Pourato as part of the Quarterly operational funding instalment.

For accounting purposes, the ISL and EEL tax invoice can be printed from Pourato. The tax invoice will be for a Trimester levy but will not provide student information or calculation details.

Finding information in Pourato(external link)

Details from ENROL about fee-paying international students at your school are available in Pourato. For more information go to Pourato | Applications & Online Systems (education.govt.nz)(external link)

ENROL

It is your school’s responsibility to ensure that the ENROL details for the international fee-paying students at your school are up to date by the levy calculation deadline. Any changes made after the levy calculation deadline will not be reflected in any future Quarterly operational funding instalments.

Some common checks that are useful to look at in ENROL ahead of the levy calculation deadline are:

• check that students are correctly assigned as international fee-paying or domestic students
• ensure that international fee-paying students are only enrolled for the period they were paying a fee for. For example, if an international student was absent from the school for a period yet still paying fees for that time period, that student should still be recorded as enrolled at your school. Alternatively, if the student has paid in advance for a different time period occurring in the future, do not record them as enrolled until the time period they have paid for occurs
• make sure that the weeks the international student was enrolled at your school is up to date in ENROL and matches your student management system
• have the correct fee amount for the international student recorded in ENROL
• ensure previous changes made during the trimester to an international fee-paying student’s ENROL details relate to the correct time period. For example, if the amount of fees charged for the student changed on 1 August but the change in ENROL was updated on 20 August, check that the fee change has been historically applied from 1 August rather than from 20 August.

International student groups

For groups of two or more international students who enrol at your school for a period of three months or less Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) tuition days, you need to use the RS14G form instead of entering each student individually in ENROL.

The RS14G form can be accessed by going to the 'Create a Student Record' tab in ENROL and clicking 'add Group Students'.

To work out the FTE tuition days, exclude sightseeing days/away from school days. For example, if the group stayed for five days but only spent the mornings at school and then went on visits in the afternoon, the FTE tuition days would be 2.5.

Sometimes groups may have differing lengths of time at your school. For example, a group of 30 Japanese students may split into two groups with 20 spending five days at school and 10 spending only three days. To calculate the FTE days for this group, you multiply the 20 by 5 and the 10 by 3, add together and divide by 30 = ((20 x 5 + 10 x 3)/30) = (100 + 30)/30 = 130/30 = 4.3.

If you have made a mistake to a group student entry please create a new form for the school group and email Enrol.DataQuality@education.govt.nz to get the incorrect form deleted.

Note: Group International Student levies are calculated outside of Pourato, and your school will be invoiced separately.

Last reviewed: 02 June 2023 Has this been useful? Give us your feedback