One street in 18 is split between two primary school zones. In Melbourne it is one in ten.

A school zone is usually talked about as a property of a suburb, but it is drawn on a map, and the line has to go somewhere. We checked every address in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and the ACT against the government primary school zone it sits in, then looked at each street as a whole. In 17,732 streets, neighbours are zoned for different primary schools. That is 5.4% of the 330,945 streets we could check, or about one in 18, and those streets hold close to a million street numbers between them.

	Streets checked	Split between zones	Share	Split down the middle
Greater Melbourne	66,547	6,486	9.7%	2% of them
Regional Victoria	36,841	2,216	6.0%	1%
Greater Brisbane	34,799	1,744	5.0%	1%
Greater Sydney	46,093	2,217	4.8%	23%
Regional New South Wales	52,703	2,234	4.2%	13%
Regional Queensland	49,794	1,986	4.0%	1%
Greater Perth	25,301	556	2.2%	21%
Greater Adelaide	8,962	197	2.2%	30%
ACT	5,773	63	1.1%	27%
All six	330,945	17,732	5.4%	7%

A street counts as split only when at least three of its street numbers, and at least 15% of the street, are zoned for a different school from the rest. One house a few metres over a line does not make a split street.

Odd numbers to one school, even numbers to another

Where a zone boundary follows a road, the two sides of that road are in different zones. Meredith Street in Bankstown is split exactly in half: the odd numbers are zoned for Bankstown North Public School and the even numbers for Yagoona Public School, 52 street numbers each. Kerferd Road in Albert Park does the same in Melbourne, with the odd side zoned for Middle Park Primary School and the even side for Albert Park Primary School. We checked both streets against the official school finders, and they agree.

In Sydney, nearly a quarter of the split streets divide this way, and in Perth, Adelaide and the ACT between a fifth and a third. In Melbourne it is about one in 40, and in Brisbane about one in 80.

In Melbourne, the line usually crosses the street

Most split streets in Melbourne and Brisbane change zone partway along instead: one end of the street is zoned for one school and the other end for another. That is why Melbourne has twice Sydney's share of split streets: 9.5% of Melbourne's streets change zone partway along, against 3.7% of Sydney's. Streets split down the middle are rarer in Melbourne than in Sydney, not more common.

Long main roads can pass through several zones. Pennant Hills Road in Carlingford crosses six primary zones, among them Carlingford West, Murray Farm and Epping West. The Pacific Highway through Slacks Creek, south of Brisbane, crosses six with at least seven street numbers each. King Street in Newtown is split between Newtown, Newtown North, Darlington and Camdenville public schools.

What this means if you are buying

A suburb's school zone is not a street's, and a street's is not a house's. If a particular school matters, check the exact address, not the street and not the suburb:

• Victoria: the Department's Find my School site says that where the zone line crosses the block of land a home is on, a child has a right to attend either school.
• New South Wales: the School Finder notes that local enrolment areas can change in future years.
• Western Australia: the map is a guide to a written description, which is the legal definition, and some areas are shared between two schools.

In every state, the school itself is the final word on its enrolment area.

How we counted

• Zones are the government primary school zones published by each state's education department, for 2026 enrolments (South Australia's for 2025). Tasmania is not included. The Northern Territory publishes no zones.
• Each G-NAF address was placed in the zone its coordinates fall in. A "street number" is one number on one street: a block of units at one number counts once, however many addresses it has.
• Only streets with at least six street numbers, every one of them inside a zone, are counted. South Australia zones only some of its schools, and Western Australia's shared "optional" areas and the ACT's overlapping zones are left out, so those three read lower partly because fewer of their streets are fully zoned.
• A street is split "down the middle" when its two largest zones take opposite sides, one mostly odd numbers and one mostly even, and at least 90% of its numbered addresses sit on their school's side.
• A street is one street within one suburb, as G-NAF records it. The same road in the next suburb is counted separately.

Every property page on SuburbScan shows the government school zones its address falls in.