Guide

Enrolment zones and ballots

1,300 of New Zealand's 2,565 schools operate an enrolment scheme. Here is what that means for a family.

What a home zone is

A school that is likely to overcrowd may operate an enrolment scheme with a home zone. Any student living inside that zone has an absolute right to enrol. Living outside it does not prevent enrolment, but out-of-zone places are limited.

How ballots work

Out-of-zone places are allocated in a set order of priority — special programmes first, then siblings of current students, then siblings of former students, then children of board employees, then everyone else. Where there are more applicants than places in a category, the school runs a random ballot. It is a lottery, not a queue: applying early confers no advantage.

Why this site will not check your address

The Ministry publishes zone boundaries as map data, and states plainly that the polygons "do not have a high degree of spatial resolution nor vertical alignment integrity" and should not be used for spatial queries against property boundaries. An address checker built on them would be wrong near every boundary — which is exactly where people check. Being wrong about a family's school is not a bug worth shipping, so this site links you to the official source instead and never guesses.

Check a specific address with the Ministry's zone finder or by ringing the school. The school's own office is the authority on its zone.