In Queensland, there is zoning, but it not the end of the story:

“Enrolment Management Plans
“Education Queensland ensures that Prep-Year 12 students are guaranteed enrolment at their nearest school and supports the efficient management of local area facilities based on service delivery standards.
“All schools in Queensland are not enrolment managed. Schools that are enrolment managed are listed on the left side of this web page.
“Schools only develop an Enrolment Management Plan when:
the site capacity of a school is under pressure now, or has this potential in the future, from out of catchment enrolments;
a school's development of a distinctive approach to meeting school and community needs has the potential to impact on enrolments;
a new school is opened (An enrolment management plan is drafted prior to commencement of operations of the school since new schools can potentially attract large numbers of students who live outside the local catchment area).
“The local catchment area is defined by the equidistant boundary based on trafficable routes between one school and its neighbouring school/s. Minor adjustments are negotiated at the school level to meet local road access and entry points.
“For a school that has an enrolment management plan it's capacity to enrol students who live outside the local catchment is dependant upon:
the school's enrolment capacity.
catering for in-catchment enrolments
allowing for in-catchment growth during the year
ensuring an even spread of students across all year levels while maintaining class size targets.
“For further information regarding Enrolment Management Plans, please refer to SCM-PR-023: Enrolment Management Plans, or contact your School Principal.”
(http://education.qld.gov.au/schools/catchment/)

(I am not responsible for the misspellings in the Queensland Education Department’s website.)

In summary, Victoria has the freest system of the six jurisdictions looked at, but none of them has strict zoning. All of them allow enrolments from outside the zone under certain circumstances, which seem to amount to if there is room.

Chris, you've once again negated the need to reply to you, by ranting to yourself about irrelevant (covered) subjects. I'm sorry you can't read, but my meaning was plain, both in the post you cite, and in the other posts you (claim) to have read. I'm at a loss as to how you could read the passage as you claim to, and more at a loss as to how you could believe I held that position when I had earlier made remarks like “because the choice of where to send students is made by the Dept of Education” on Feb 21. At this point I can't say I care about your confusion, as you keep using it as a distraction from the actual point, one which you could have answered in a single sentence by now; do you support parental choice, or do you not?

Of course, there is a related matter you raise, which is to (claim to) refute the lack of choice now. This is odd, because I've made it clear where I stand as far as outliers go, but let's go over it quickly once more:
a) "Parents in Victoria are free to send their children to any non-selective school that has room". I already answered this, good schools don't have room. In the ACT the equivalent would be to claim that any parent can send their child to Telopea or Narrabundah if they have room (but those schools are always full). Why don't good schools have room? Because most kids are sorted by zones, and this keeps bad schools open. A parent can "choose" which bad school (in a poor area) they will send their kids to, but that does not help them much. I want them to have real choices, and good schools in all areas, not just the affluent ones. There is no incentive to do that now. At the risk of treating you seriously again, do you support individual schools being able to expand as they wish? (at any rate, this is all aided by school autonomy, which you hint you oppose)

b) As you note, NSW has some out of area placement. Guess how that works. Good schools take the best students from out of areas, and bad schools take worse students from far away areas to counteract the loss of students to private schools. But at any rate, this "helps" only a small number of kids, and isn't the solution I want. There should be good schools in every zone, but that doesn't happen when the bad schools get no real incentive (and there's always going to be some kids in a zone whose parents aren't able/willing to send them to a far off school).
c) In WA "your child has automatic entry to your local school"... and again, guess which zones have the best schools? The ones in wealth suburbs. Guess who lives there? This is not a new argument, you should have known better than to post this rubbish.

The rest of what you say is just repeating the lines off their website, as though they carry some special meaning that defies any of these realities. They don't. It's actually easy even in the ACT, where there is supposedly no selection, to ensure you're taking the best kids when you take out of area kids. You interview their parents, you ask what subjects they want to do, etc, you look for their name in the national competition results. I have advised plenty of kids applying to Narrabundah to say they're going there because they want to do [insert wacky subjects/program aimed at smart kids]. And it works. I don't know if you're as naive as you look, or if that would even be possible, but you've said almost nothing of substance above.

To wearunique. Seriously? Could you make a more obvious attempt to channel the politics of envy... air conditioning! The stockman and building construction worker doesn't get air conditioning either, I guess it's only right we take some of the teacher's wages from them (especially the air conditioned ones) and give it to them? Take yourself off. Teaching is not a special profession.

weareunique,

Thank you. The whole debate is full of misinformation and slogans, which is why I often just don’t comment on it at all.

In one school I taught in, the teachers pooled their tea money (which used to be paid when you had to stay for parent-teacher nights, but which, in line with the general teacher-bashing climate of the nation, was later abolished) in order to provide air-conditioning for their own staff room. Teachers’ physical contains of work are often very poor. I think the general teacher-bashing that is so widespread in Australia is very sad.

The facts on private school funding have been ignored for years, especially by the AEU. That said, the government school system is under-funded, as is the Catholic school system, as are some other private schools. However, I won’t go into all that now because my views require long elaboration as they are somewhat different from both of the main yellers in the “debate”.

The Victorian government has the most sensible funding system in the nation, insofar as most of the money comes into the school as a “voucher” for each student”, but the amounts are too low. Again, this is too complex to go into here. I have made some points at:
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/maralynparker/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/teacher_strike/#commentsmore

Riddler,

I have not “avoided [your] question” (1.55:48pm, 4/2). As I explained earlier, I am responding in priority order. My first priority remains “to correct the untrue things you have said in response to me” (8.03:14am, 2/3). If and when I run out of things to correct, I will discuss teacher salaries (my second priority) and then private schools (my third priority). I’ll even fit grammar in somewhere after I have finished with my first priority.

There is no contradiction between my two statements on grammar; i.e., that it is taught and that it is taught less now than it used to be, so I am not accepting and have not accepted your initial point at all.

The relevant sequence on grammar is as follows:
Riddler: ‘The Education Department and Union suck at education. They've eliminated classics, grammar, etc, from most schools.”’ 7.16:17pm, 4/3)

Chris C: ‘The English courses of any school I taught in had grammar in them.”
‘ (5.15:55pm, 6/2)

Riddler: “Have classics and grammar classes increased or decreased since 1975?” (8.25:23am, 23/2)

Chris C: ‘That is not the question you first asked of me. You first said, “The Education Department and Union suck at education. They've eliminated classics, grammar, etc, from most schools” (7.16:17pm, 4/2). Saying “eliminated…from most schools” is a long way different from “decreased”.

‘I replied with,
“The English courses of any school I taught in had grammar in them” (5.15:55pm, 6/2).

‘You replied with, ” Classics & Grammar have been killed off in schools” (4.58:15pm, 8/2). Saying “killed off” is a long way different from “decreased”.

‘The short answer to your question is that classics and grammar classes have decreased in schools since 1975. If you had put it that way to begin with, I would have accepted it.’ (1.33:04pm, 25/2)

RIddler: ‘The end result is you are now, in a very shady and backwards way, accepting my initial point was correct….’(2.14:06pm, 25/2)

You say ‘So now I’m told Grammar and Classics have “declined” but not “dropped generally”. I confess to have no idea what this means in your mind.’

My actual wording was, ‘I have not “conceded” that grammar and classics have dropped generally….Had you at the start simply said that the teaching of grammar had declined, I would have agreed, but that is not what you said.’ The key word is ‘conceded’, which is why it is in inverted commas. I accept that the teaching of grammar has declined, but this is not a concession because I never said it had not. What I disputed was your initial statement, not that the teaching of grammar had ‘dropped’ or ‘declined’, but that it had been ‘eliminated…from most schools’.

‘We’ were not discussing only secondary teachers. You decided that.

I have no problem with you “deciding for [yourself] what argument [you] will make’, but you don’t get to decide what argument I will make or to make me go ‘elsewhere’ because I am discussing things that you don’t want me to discuss.

You persist in misusing the inflation calculator. I will explain it again.

If you put $11,400, 1975 and 2010 into RBA annual calculator, you will get $68,678 as your result. However, we are looking at the CPI changes, not from 1975 to 2010 (35 years), but from 1975 to 2011 (36 years). I am comparing January 1975 salaries with January 2011 salaries. The nearest CPI date to January 1 in any year is December 31 of the year before. So, you need to go to the quarterly calculator. Put in $11,400, December, 1974 (i.e., the nearest CPI date to January, 1975) and December, 2010 (i.e., the nearest CPI date to January 2011). The January, 1975 salary of $11,400 is $75,136 in January, 2011 dollars. The RBA calculator is saying that the total CPI increase from January 1975 to January 2011 is 559.1 per cent, somewhat higher than I calculated in my earlier posts.