ACT public schools are administered through the ACT Education Directorate. The geography is unusual: a city-state with suburbs that each carry a published Priority Enrolment Area, often shortened to PEA. If your child will live in the ACT, the PEA for that address is the public promise. This independent hub explains that promise. It is not a government website.
Priority Enrolment Areas
The ACT Government describes Canberra as divided into Priority Enrolment Areas. Each school has suburbs and areas assigned to it. Your PEA comes from your home address, so the child attends a school near where they live. From kindergarten to Year 12, every ACT child is guaranteed a place at a public school within that PEA.
That guarantee is the point of the system. It is also the limit of the system. You can apply to a school outside your PEA, but you may not get a place. The ACT page on applying outside your area is the authority for that residual process.
Shared zones are the main local complication. Some suburbs are zoned to more than one school. In a shared zone the child is guaranteed a place at one of the PEA schools, not necessarily the preferred one. The suburb listings on the PEA page spell this out street by street in some cases. Read the listing for your suburb, including any note about changes between enrolment years. A PEA map tool is also published for a geographic view.
NSW families living close to the ACT are described separately. ACT guidance currently says those families are guaranteed a place at a NSW pathway school, which is not the same as an open choice of every Canberra campus. If you live in Queanbeyan or another nearby NSW town, read that pathway text before you assume an ACT PEA applies.
Preschool, kindergarten, high school, college
The ACT uses preschool attached to public primary schools, then kindergarten to Year 6, high school, and Years 11–12 college. Those layers can have different PEA shapes. A primary PEA does not always point to a single college, and some college listings are shared.
Public preschool is its own offer. ACT material says families who apply for public preschool are guaranteed an offer, usually from a preferred school or a school in the PEA or NSW pathway, but not always, because some preschools are in high demand. Read the preschool enrolment pages as a separate task from kindergarten.
Early childhood schools and specialist schools do not use PEAs as part of their enrolment in the same way. If you are seeking those settings, start with the Directorate’s specialist or early-childhood pages.
Selective pathways and My School
The ACT does not run a NSW-style statewide selective-high-school network. Some campuses have particular academic or specialist identities inside a comprehensive PEA model. Extension is still a school-level conversation. See selective schools for the national contrast.
Once a PEA has named the campus, My School from ACARA can show a published profile. It will not decide the PEA.
Term dates
ACT public school term dates, including teacher commencement days, new-student start days and continuing-student return days, are published by the ACT Government, sometimes as multi-year tables. Those distinctions matter if you are starting kindergarten. This hub does not reprint the dates. Use the official table via school terms.
If you are moving to Canberra, take the new suburb to the PEA listing first. A PEA can change between years; the government pages note year-to-year differences where they exist. Then contact the school about enrolment documents.
Shared zones deserve a second read if you are choosing between two named campuses in the same suburb listing. The guarantee is a place in the PEA set, not a place at every school printed on the line. If you apply to the preferred campus and it is full, the Directorate’s process for the remaining PEA school is the one that still has to work. Do not let a preference freeze the guaranteed path.
College (Years 11 and 12) in the ACT is a distinct layer. Families used to a single 7–12 high school elsewhere should ask which college the PEA points to, whether that college is shared, and how subject lines are organised. That is a planning question, not a ranking question.
For the national sequence, continue with enrolment, catchments and choosing a public school. Use My School only after the PEA has named the campus you are actually entitled or eligible to apply to.
If you are arriving from interstate during the year, the PEA still applies to the new Canberra address. A Victorian zone result or an NSW School Finder printout does not carry over. Bring proof of the ACT address and ask the school how it places students who start in Term 2, 3 or 4. The college layer, in particular, will want to see previous subject information so a timetable can be built.