School Density & Sector Mix
Statistics on this page describe the 6,445 scored localities with more than 200 residents. 13,818 localities are scored in all.
One of five Meridian components. Reads the supply of schooling in a locality’s council area from two measures: schools per 1,000 residents aged 5 to 14, and non-government schools as a share of all schools. Each is ranked nationally and the score is the mean of the two ranks. It describes how many schools there are and their sector mix. It says nothing about the quality of any school.
Sources: the school registers and school lists published by each state and territory (New South Wales Department of Education and NSW Education Standards Authority; Victorian Department of Education; Queensland Department of Education; South Australian Education Standards Board; Western Australian Department of Education; Northern Territory Department of Education; ACT Government), and the 2021 Census for residents aged 5 to 14.
One school is counted once: campuses, annexes and sites that are not schools are merged or left out. Counted this way, each jurisdiction’s government and non-government totals are within 5% of the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Schools 2025 count. A school is placed in a council area by its locality name, or by its postcode where the name matches more than one locality. 55 schools (0.6%) could not be placed and are left out, 46 of them New South Wales non-government schools listed under a suburb name shared by more than one locality.
Ranking and grain: the two measures are ranked against localities with more than 200 residents. Every locality in a council area carries that council area’s reading; a locality with 200 residents or fewer carries it as a council-area reading and is not part of the ranking.
Tasmania is not scored on this component.
Sector share: a higher non-government share of schools scores higher, as a measure of the range of schooling on offer and not a judgement between sectors. Among school students living in localities with more than 200 residents, the share attending non-government schools at the 2021 Census follows household means more closely than the share of schools does, and it is not scored.
Alignment with the pillar. Across the 6,445 localities with more than 200 residents scored on both, this component and APN Meridian™ (Education Value Index) (24130) have a correlation of 0.24, on a scale where 1 means the two scores move together exactly and 0 means they are unrelated. The two are largely independent: a locality’s score on this component says little about its overall Meridian score, and the component carries information the pillar’s other inputs do not.
Each bar is the average score of the jurisdiction’s localities with more than 200 residents, with every locality counted equally regardless of population; the dashed line marks the national mean of 49.46. The Northern Territory averages highest at 60.7 (162 localities) and Queensland lowest at 45.7 (1,478). South Australia averages 50.7, Victoria 50.6, Western Australia 50.2, New South Wales 50.0 and the Australian Capital Territory 47.0. Tasmania is not scored on this component. A reading is that of the whole council area, so localities in one council area share it.
The other four components of APN Meridian™ (Education Value Index) (24130).
- Mean of two national percentile ranks: schools per 1,000 residents aged 5 to 14, and the non-government share of schools
- School counts from state and territory registers, each jurisdiction within 5% of the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Schools 2025 count
- Ranked against localities with more than 200 residents; Tasmania not scored
