Parents are being pushed out of the city because of lack of school places for their children, according to residents in Sydney.
One Sydney mother has decided she will be placing her son in a high school in Tamworth next year.
That’s almost a five hour drive and around the same time it takes to get from London to Brussels.
“Inner city students – like my 11-year-old son – are slowly being squeezed out of public schools,” Janine Barrett told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Janine says the Department of Education isn’t thinking about the needs of children who will live in the “large number of apartments being built in the inner city”.
“Our family is one of an increasing number who have decided to flee the CBD for better schools for our children in the country or suburbs,” she said.
So what are urban dwellers up against?
Three out of every five people (60%) live in a capital city, and slightly over a third (35%) live in either Sydney or Melbourne, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
“The most densely populated part of Australia is a small area just north of Central Railway Station in Sydney, between Pitt and Castlereagh Streets,” say the ABS.
This area has a population density of 186,000 persons per square kilometre and is exactly the area Janine is talking about.