School zones
Find your local school
Use findmyschool.vic.gov.au to search for your local government school. This is the official and most up to date school zones map.
Going to your local school
Most parents send their child to the public school closest to where they live. The designated neighbourhood school is measured by a straight line from your permanent address,
If your child lives at multiple addresses, their permanent address is where they spend most of their weekdays.
For more information, The Department provides guidance through the School Placement Policy to ensure that students have access to their designated neighbourhood school.
You can find more information and answers to frequently asked questions on the Department’s website under School zones.
Going to a non-local school
You have the choice to enrol your child at a school outside of your designated neighbourhood zone. The school may accept this enrolment as long as it has enough space. Once the school is full, it cannot accept enrolments from outside its neighbourhood zone.
School zone changes for 2024
Our zones have not changed and are publicly available on the Find my School website.
Placement Policy:
This has been updated to give schools, parents and carers greater clarity and to support consistent and fair decision-making.
The updated policy will come into effect from the start of Term 2, 2023, and will apply to all mid-year transfers and 2024 enrolment applications, unless otherwise specified.
The updated Placement Policy includes a simplified priority order of placement. Students living within the school zone have been removed from the priority order as they are guaranteed entry to their local school.
The priority order of placement is now:
- students with a sibling at the same permanent address who is attending the school at the same time
- all other students in order of closeness of their home to the school.
The Placement Policy is available to view on our website.
Enrolment appeals
You can appeal if the school decides not to enrol your child in year 7. The placement committee at the school will review your appeal. Contact the school to lodge an appeal.
Other zones and school types
- Single-sex schools have zones to ensure they can cater for local children but they are not created the same way as mainstream schools and are usually larger. This is because they are not a local school for all children. You have the choice to attend a single-sex school. If you are in the zone for a single-sex school, you will also be in the zone for a co-ed school.
- Zones for multi-campus schools will depend on local arrangements (e.g. how close the campuses are and whether they cater for junior or secondary students or both) check findmyschool.vic.gov.au to see their zones.
- Community schools and English language schools do not draw from their local area only and so do not have a zone.
- Selective entry schools do not have zones, but they have other enrolment rules.
- Specialist schools do not have zones but they do have designated transport areas.
Download the information on this page as an FAQ (Word document, 19 pages).