Where are the top public schools in Sydney located

I just finished mapping the top 50 and 100 Sydney, NSW public school which you can find them in the previous two entries at

Year 2014 Top 50 NSW Public School Catchment Map

and

Year 2015 Top 100 Sydney, NSW Public School Catchment Map

It is actually very interesting how concentrated the top public schools for NSW are located. 91 out of the 100 top public school are located in Sydney two of which are special schools, 2 in New Castle, 1 in Wollongong, 1 in Central Coast and 5 in country NSW. To give some prospective in pure population wise, 62 percent of NSW population lives in Sydney, however 89 percent of top 100 state’s public schools are in Sydney. The concentration is even higher when you looking at the top 50, 46 out of the top 50 state’s public school is in Sydney for the year 2014. There is another top 50 that is located in Sydney which not included in the count that is the Sydney Distance Education Primary School.

If you lived in Sydney for any period of time, you will likely know that there are a lot of good schools in the northern Sydney. I was still a little surprised once the top schools are mapped out and how concentrated they are in the northern Sydney. As you can see from my top 50 Sydney NSW public school catchment map that only 6 out of the 46 Sydney’s top public school is located outside of Northern Sydney.

First I want to mention that the breakdown of region is approximate as there is really no exact definition which suburb belong to which Sydney regions.

Number of Public Schools in each respective Sydney area that are in top 50 in NSW. Another interesting point to note when looking the stats is that Western,  South Western Sydney and Shire district are not represented in the list at all.

  • North Shore: 23
  • Northern Suburbs: 13
  • Hills District: 3
  • Eastern Suburbs: 3
  • Inner West: 2
  • Northern Beaches: 1
  • Southern Suburbs: 1

This is the number of Public Schools in each respective Sydney area that are in top 100 in NSW. South western Sydney is again not represented at all, Western Sydney and Shire district only have marginal presence in the list.

  • North Shore: 34
  • Northern Suburbs: 19
  • Inner West: 10
  • Eastern Suburbs: 8
  • Hills District: 7
  • Northern Beaches: 5
  • Southern Suburbs: 2
  • Western Sydney: 2
  • Shire District: 2

What is also interesting to note is that just about every suburb is North Shore and Northern Suburbs are represented in the top 100 list. This is also why in my opinion picking a school is not as important when you are buying properties in the North Shore and Northern Suburbs, because just about every local public school is very good.

I may do a follow up entry in the future to do some further analysis on why the concentration of good public schools in North Sydney. If I get time I will try also collect some other stats to facilitate this.

As usual contact the school in question for the final confirmation and you can also access the full catchment map by following this link.

2 thoughts on “Where are the top public schools in Sydney located”

    1. Hi James,

      The ranking currently is obtained via Google searching, primarily bettereducation. I have been reading into the ranking of the schools and probably will do a post on this topic in not too distant future on how to use current public available data to rank a school.

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