School zones

not school traffic zones but school zones are back in the news.
The Little Drummer Boy - not so little now - has just started high school. He is highly intelligent (although I wonder about the drumming) and his parents were relieved when he "won" a place at one high school rather than another. 
The high school he is now attending has a specialist maths unit for the most able students and they are keen for him to take advantage of it. When I asked him about it he shrugged and said, "It's okay."
It doesn't do to look too enthusiastic about school.
His new school is the one my mother attended and the one my brother attended for his final year. In my mother's case she lived almost literally next door to the school and, all those years ago, it didn't have the same reputation.  By the time my brother went there it was a "zoned" school. He was able to attend because he had earned a Commonwealth Bursary and we were, briefly and disastrously, living with my maternal grandmother while our parents were still  a long way from the city. (The school my father was the head of finished at the end of what is now Year 11 - not  Year 12.)
At that time the school had a good reputation - one perhaps not entirely deserved. It now has a mixed reputation but  it is still popular and still zoned.
The alternative for the Little Drummer Boy was a slightly closer school. The enrolment numbers at that one had dropped to a point that raised questions about closing it. Why? 
The Senior Cat and I know that, on the other side of a major road there is a different social demographic. At one time the school was popular because it catered for students interested in doing more technical and hands on subjects. The curriculum changed and those subjects are no longer taught. Other schools which had more desirable academic results proved more popular. 
Oh, it's more complex than that of course but both schools are now in the news because the boundaries have changed again. The primary schools are already zoned - for much the same reasons. Parents with more money to spend have added more facilities to some schools than others. It may be state funded education - but only up to a point.  
Those same parents, and others, have been buying houses "inside the zone" of the schools they want their children to attend. Houses for sale are even advertised as being "zoned for...". The redrawing of the boundaries has caused fury among those who are no longer in their desired zone. One parent, father of four year old and an eighteen month old,  has complained that the value of his house has dropped "overnight" because of the announcement. 
Will things be the same when his four year starts high school in seven years? It's unlikely. Things could be very different.
My siblings and I did almost all our schooling in "area" schools. These were country schools where children of all ages were taught. My father, the headmaster of more than one of these schools, struggled with teachers who were almost always very young and very inexperienced. They were often not qualified to teach the subjects they were required to teach. They drove the school buses morning and night - making their days far longer than those of their city counterparts. The facilities were poor. You went into the Public Examinations Board stream or the Agricultural stream. There were no subject choices for students apart from girls doing "Home Economics" and boys doing "Woodwork" - and that lone girl who asked to do Woodwork. (The Senior Cat let her do it too.)
It wasn't a good education by any means. But it produced more than one doctor, a  university lecturer in mathematics, a lawyer, a number of teachers and nurses, a pharmacist and an agricultural research worker just among the years my brother and I were in. My brother and I have multiple degrees as well. 
No, it wasn't easy. Yes, we missed out on some of the many facilities of the big city schools. 
We did get there though. It isn't just the schools. It is the students as well.