About Zone Finder.
Zone Finder checks New Zealand home addresses against school home zones. School offices use it to check enrolment applications against their street list; families use it to see which schools zone their address.
How school home zones work
A school that could otherwise become overcrowded can have an enrolment scheme, which sets out a home zone. A student who lives in the home zone is entitled to enrol at the school.
Places for students who live outside the zone are offered in a priority order set out in law, by ballot when there are more applicants than places. Schools usually ask for proof of address.
Each school's written enrolment scheme is the final word on its zone. A map or a street list, including the ones here, can be out of date or imprecise near a boundary, so confirm with the school before you enrol or move. The Ministry of Education explains school zones and enrolment schemes in more detail.
Where the data comes from
- Schools: the Ministry of Education's Directory of Educational Institutions (names, types, addresses and office email), refreshed daily.
- Home zones: the Ministry of Education's school enrolment scheme master zone maps.
- Addresses: LINZ NZ Addresses.
All three are published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
How street lists are kept
Each school's list starts as a draft: its Ministry zone map is matched against every LINZ address to find the streets and number ranges inside the zone. Streets that cross the zone edge, or pass within 40 metres of it, are flagged for the school to confirm.
Only the school's office can change its list. Staff sign in with a link sent to the office email address the school publishes in the Schools Directory, and every change is recorded in the public change log. Browse every school zone by town.
Privacy
- Enrolment application files are read in your browser. Applicant names and addresses are never uploaded.
- When you look up a home address, it is read in your browser and only the street and suburb are sent, to suggest addresses and find the schools that zone it. The house number is never sent.
- Zone Finder stores the school list, each school's street list and the change log. The change log records the name and email address of whoever made each change; the email address is only ever shown in part.
- Signing in stores the office email address and a scrambled (hashed) copy of the sign-in token. Expired links and sessions are deleted.
- Your browser remembers your theme, your sign-in session for 30 days and the last three schools you opened. None of that is sent anywhere.
- School location maps load from OpenStreetMap using the school's published coordinates. OpenStreetMap receives your IP address and the map tiles requested, but no applicant addresses or uploaded files. See the OpenStreetMap privacy policy.