pmpm

Hi,

We are planning to move to North Melbourne by July/August this year and I'll be working in Epping. We have 2 kids (7yr girl & 4yr boy) and are looking for some good private schools and nice suburbs in North Melbourne. I am surprised with so many single sex schools as opposed to co-ed schools in Australia. We want to send them to co-ed school and ideally a combined school (but don't mind if it's just primary school). Could I please get some recommendations for nice suburbs and good private schools. We don't mind good state schools. Our criteria for nice suburbs is one with low crime rate, multi-cultural society, friendly people, parks for kids, good biking tracks. We'll have 2 cars so it does not matter if it has not got any railway station or good bus connection. We will be renting initially but will be buying very soon once we have seen the areas ourselves.

Our criteria for good schools is - mixed population, high ICSEA score, school which work on overall development of child rather than just academic and very importantly low bullying rate.

I don't mind travelling 30-40 min for work in Epping. One thought we had was that we can live in between Epping and good schools in eastern suburbs especially if there's school bus from the suburb to the school though we understand initially we will have to drop/pick them up ourselves.

Thanks everybody in advance.

OzTennis

Welcome to the forum and good luck with the move. (I'm from Melbourne but live in Scotland presently but visit home each year; I was a teacher both in Melbourne and in Scotland so know a little about what you are asking).

Firstly there is a suburb called North Melbourne which is immediately to the north/north west of the CBD so you are talking about the northern suburbs but Epping is really in the north eastern suburbs. That's the pedantry out of the way!

You are probably familiar with this website which lists 91 private schools in Melbourne's northern suburbs? A lot of them are quite a way from Epping (e.g. in Ivanhoe) but quite a few are out that way.

Melbourne North private schools | Private Schools Guide

Click on the filter top right and you can narrow the search down by type of religion or non-demonational, co-educational or single sex, CRICOS registered etc and then you can select suitable locations from the narrowed list.

I can't specifically recommend some of these but with your Melbourne suburbs map and doing a Google search on some you will find out the better/suitable ones.

pmpm

Thanks OzTennis (good name btw). I knew about this website; however, it only lists the names of the schools and some description about it. It was very confusing to ascertain which one is good and which one is better. We have been looking at google searches, reviews, etc but it's getting more and more confusing. The problem is there is always a waiting list for private schools there so we wanted to make a decision here and then put our names on waiting list. Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of visiting these schools personallys

I agree Epping is bit far from CBD. I'll have a look again at the website again.

Can you recommend some good suburbs also please? Thanks.

OzTennis

'No worries', glad to help. I understand perfectly the difficulty of trying to get good information from afar and that you want to get a 'head's up' so you can hit the ground running.

How about the ranking of Victorian private schools list? You can cross-reference the filtered, northern suburbs private school list with this:

Rankings of Top Private Secondary Schools in Melbourne, Australia 2012 | Best Australian Middle Schools | Top Australian High Schools - Education Rankings

It's interesting to me that the overwhelming majority of the top 80 are in the eastern and south eastern suburbs with very few in the northern or western suburbs. I'm a bit averse to these rankings as they reflect what you'd expect - the most affluent suburbs have the 'best' schools. There will be excellent schools outside the top 80 too.

A quick look down the list suggests there's not many in reasonable/some proximity to Epping or nearby suburbs.

Good suburbs? I'm from Williamstown so don't know the northern suburbs as well. A look at the map of Melbourne and Epping (about 25 kms north of CBD) suggests, if it were me, that I'd want to live either closer to the CBD or east/south east of there - Bundoora, Greensborough, Watsonia or a bit more rural, further out Eltham, Research. I presume you'd rather travel to work and find a better suburb for the family than Epping?

My mental map of Melbourne had Epping a bit east of where it actually is incidentally!