The great Auckland school zone shift

Lower-decile principals worry about loss of funding as students travel out of zone.

Thousands of students are travelling long distances across Auckland to avoid their local schools.

Figures show that each day around 3,100 students in West Auckland travel to secondary schools in the central isthmus, with a further 800 leaving the area to attend North Shore schools.

South Auckland similarly loses a net 3,000 high-school students to central Auckland.

The volume of the movement is particular to Auckland. Morning trains are often filled with students leaving their area, and special buses move others out of their communities.

School holidays - which start today - cut the number of vehicles on Auckland's arterial roads by nearly 15 per cent, Auckland Transport said, with journey times reduced by 15 to 20 per cent.

Principals worry the problems facing schools in poorer communities are worsened because the more well-off students in an area go elsewhere - deepening the social divides between haves and have-nots.

- www.nzherald.co.nz