By Adam Carey
More than 100 of Melbourne’s most sought-after state schools have had enrolment restrictions imposed on them this year to contain excessive demand for a place.
The Age has also obtained the list of 17 Melbourne schools that have been given a geographically smaller “non-standard zone” to control enrolment pressure, as the Andrews government looks to discourage families from “school shopping” and instead enrol their children at their designated local school.
The Kanazawa family moved into the area to get into the tightly held Mckinnon Secondary College school zone.Credit: Penny Stephens
The list includes a cluster of newer schools in the inner south, such as Albert Park College, Prahran High School and South Melbourne Primary, as well as established schools in the eastern suburbs with formidable academic reputations, such as McKinnon Secondary College and Balwyn High School.
Outer suburban schools, including Gaayip-Yagila Primary in Mickleham and Tulliallan Primary in Cranbourne North have also had non-standard zones drawn around them to rein in explosive growth. Gaayip-Yagila opened in 2021 and already has more than 800 students; Tulliallan opened in 2017 and has more than 1400 students.
Some primary schools that were opened on small sites in Melbourne’s inner city less than five years ago have also been given non-standard zones because they have no room to expand.
Docklands Primary opened in 2021 and experienced such unexpected growth that it had to expand into disused retail spaces at the nearby District Docklands shopping centre.
South Melbourne Park Primary opened in 2019 and has already put a cap on prep enrolments.
McKinnon Secondary has been given one of the tightest zones among Melbourne secondary schools, but still counts among the city’s largest, with more than 2500 students.
The small zone and swelling student population are a product of the intense competition for a place, which has triggered a housing boom in the surrounding streets.
Pitsa Binnion, who retired as principal last year after 15 years in the role, said the school’s rise had been built on the back of outstanding academic results.
McKinnnon Secondary College former principal Pitsa Binnion.
It was not a school of choice for many local families 20 years ago, Binnion said, but is now forced to reject hundreds of out-of-zone applications each year, despite opening a second campus and expanding its zone in 2021.
“It’s a very problematic situation now; pressure for enrolments is very high,” she said.
“People have demolished family homes where two or three kids would live, and they built townhouses and [apartment buildings] on the same block, so that’s what put additional pressure on enrolments.”
Corin Kanazawa, who has two daughters at McKinnon Secondary College and a son at Ormond Primary School, which also has a non-standard zone, said the extra expense of buying in the school zone was a better deal than paying “exorbitant” private school fees.
“It’s worth it,” she said. “Either you pay private school fees, which are exorbitant – and we couldn’t afford for two children anyway, or even one child, to be honest with you – or we put them in McKinnon, move into the zone and pay the higher rent.”
The family rented a small apartment in the zone 18 months before their eldest daughter was due to start secondary school. They subsequently bought a townhouse.
Kanazawa admitted she felt lucky to have bought a property in such an intensely sought-after zone, and said she knew people who would like to rent in the area but find it unaffordable.
She has also seen at close range the influence the school has on property development. This year alone, three sets of townhouses have gone up on her residential street.
McKinnon Secondary College’s vertical campus, pictured when it was under construction in 2021.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
“I know families that actually downsized and moved into an apartment just to get into the school zone,” she said.
Not everyone who buys in the zone is interested in sending their children to the school.
Eric Cohen is a real estate agent who operates in the McKinnon zone area, and said many buyers are based overseas, and solely motivated by profit.
“They are overseas buyers investing in the school zone for the future and don’t have permanent residence, they are buying with [Foreign Investment Review Board] permission,” Cohen said.
“They are allowed to invest in the area provided they build something, so they are buying blocks of land and competing against people trying to get into the school zone.”
Property prices can be significantly higher inside a school zone than just outside its boundaries.
Real estate data for the 12 months to March shows that the popularity of Glen Waverley Secondary College has inflated in-zone prices by almost 30 per cent.
School zonesCredit: Matt Golding
The school of more than 2000 students in Melbourne’s east has issued strict warnings online that any attempt to find loopholes in the neighbourhood zoning rules will not be tolerated.
“Families are expected to remain in the school neighbourhood area for the entire time the child is enrolled,” the school states.
The expectation seeks to tackle the trend of families renting in a desired zone for 12 months to gain admission for one child, then moving back to their permanent home outside the zone.
“The college continues to experience exceptional, unabated growth in its school population,” the school said.
“The increase in numbers has been particularly exacerbated by the number of families moving into the School Neighbourhood Area, as well as the increase in the number of rental properties within the area.”
Not all oversubscribed public schools have a non-standard zone, but 102 have been issued with an enrolment management plan for this year by the Department of Education, setting a restriction on enrolments.
The plans include restrictions on enrolling out-of-zone siblings and caps on year 7 enrolments.
The Andrews government tightened its catchment policy in April, scrapping schools’ ability to offer out-of-zone students a place on curriculum grounds.
Rules on siblings were also tightened, with siblings only guaranteed a place if they live at the same address and will attend school at the same time.
An Education Department spokesperson said every student is entitled to attend their local government school.
“Students can also enrol at a school outside their zone if the school has sufficient accommodation, and it aligns with the school’s enrolment management plan, where applicable,” they said.
Deakin University’s Dr Emma Rowe has researched “catchment area segregation” among Melbourne’s public schools, and said the most popular schools often share demographic qualities.
Analysis of census data in Rowe’s study found oversubscribed schools often have a high proportion of affluent and Australian-born parents, and a lower proportion that identify with minority religions such as Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.
“If we think about schools of choice, it’s often upwardly mobile white families looking for similarly upwardly mobile white families,” Rowe said.
“If there’s a perception of exclusivity about the school, that tends to increase the desirability of the school. School choice is quite emotional.”
Rowe said parents’ desire to enrol their children in a particular school of choice was more often driven by perceptions than by data on academic results, and in keeping with an Australian cultural predilection for “school shopping”.
Though literacy and numeracy results were higher in the most popular schools, the gap in results with rejected schools “is far less heightened and dramatic, in comparison to the racial, income and religious segregation that is playing out across residential and public school catchment areas”, her study found.
Choosing an advantaged public school is in this way a rational choice, given that it may offer a perceived higher chance of success, the study found.
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