Misery loves company.

My misery: Trying to find a half-way decent, reasonably priced flat within walking distance to work that will not cost me an arm and a leg, during the busiest month of the year.

And my company presented itself when I met one of my competitors at a flat viewing two weekends ago. As well as dealing with the agony of finding a place to live he had to consider the bureaucracy of getting into a popular school as well as the hefty premium on a flat.

Because of maximum roll caps imposed by the Education Ministry he could not get his son in their preferred school as they lived outside its boundary. He had also missed out on the ballot.

Sure there is a role for government in public education but it is worth asking whether someone sitting in central Wellington should dictate to which school a parent should send their child.

Under the Education Amendment Bill 2015 matters were set to get worse for families. The Bill proposed greater powers for the Minister including fining schools that refused to erect a fence. Lucky the proposal was overturned.

The current system still provides wiggle room letting willing schools stretch to accommodate students. By removing voluntary zoning, the proposed system was going to further stifle school autonomy and opportunities for poorer students.

The intentions of zoning make sense. A school cannot be expected to take on an infinite number of students with finite resources. The set up also gives the local children dibs at the local school.

It is a good thing the envisioned new powers were overturned but the existing fences still make the poor students who cannot move, the losers. But imagine if popular schools could set up offshoots in an area with fewer popular schools?

What is worrying most about my competitor’s case is that his wanting to go to the popular college was based on the misconception that the school’s high decile necessarily means it is academically superior to the lower decile schools in his current neighbourhood.

Worst case scenario is that he found his family a shoebox flat so his son can attend a school that ends up not being the best school for him anyway.

On my part, I now have a 70-minute commute by car rather than the 10 minutes by foot I envisioned. But at least I do not have kids.