A closer look at school zone fraud
The teacher a child has matters more than the school they attend.
This is what parents should bear in mind before lying about where they live in order to get their child into a school they are out of zone for, Senior Lecturer Stuart Deerness recently told Re: News.
"There's much greater variance [in opportunities and achievements] within any one school than there is between schools. So, actually, there's not a lot of difference between going to a more desirable school and a less desirable school,” he said.
Dr Deerness told Re: News there is a difference though between people who are trying to gain an advantage and those who do not have a stable location where they live, and that for the later the system needs to be flexible.
The current school zoning system changes in 1989 allowed more powerful schools to manipulate their zoning to include more affluent families - and to exclude the less well off, he said.
Now, some families live in zone for several schools, and others for only one.
Read more about what Dr Deerness has to say about school zoning on Re: News.