COMMENT
Hearing the plight of families facing new rules on out-of-zone enrolments from a Lake Macquarie school recently struck a chord with me.
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In case you had not heard, basically schools in the past have accepted students from out of their catchment zone.
You have to apply for your child to be accepted, but as far as I am aware in the past if you had one child into a school then siblings were usually accepted too.
That is all set to change now under new out-of-zone enrolment policies where schools across the country are putting a blanket ban on students living out of zone being accepted, whether their siblings attend or not.
I understand the issue that schools face with skyrocketing numbers of students and nowhere to put them as many are already at capacity.
But for those parents who have children already settled in a school and now have the knowledge their younger siblings are unlikely to be accepted to the same school too, I can understand the dilemma and stress.
One couple whose eldest child attends Biddabah Public School spoke out in The Herald recently, saying they were thinking about selling their family home and buying in the enrolment zone of their daughter’s school so they do not have to take her out and do not have to send their second child somewhere else.
I feel the pain because my family is in a similar predicament.
We have just sold our property which was in the school zone for our son’s school. We are now in the process of looking for a new place to buy and are well aware that if we do not buy in zone then our two other children are potentially not going to get in.
It is stressful as our son is settled is in his school and has established strong peer groups.
We are looking in area but whether we are going to be able to find, and also afford, a house in zone is a factor on our minds.
We do not want to take our son out of the school he is in and we certainly do not want to have to send our children to different schools, but these appear the choices we are now faced with.