Marine and Tim Willis with their bilingual daughter, Lucie (6). Lucie goes to Fitzroy Primary to participate in the school’s bilingual French program. Picture: Jay Town
The fact school zones boost property prices is well known — but new research suggests a particular type of school takes this up a notch.
House prices in the Brunswick South Primary School catchment shot up 7.8-8.7 per cent after it became bilingual by teaching Italian from 2017, according to a Deakin University study.
The results were compared to catchments of non-bilingual schools achieving similar NAPLAN results, to find homebuyers were willing to fork out for the “scarce resource”.
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Study co-author Dr Jian Liang expected the same phenomenon would exist in established bilingual schools catchments like Camberwell Primary, Footscray Primary and Abbotsford Primary, where students studied French, Vietnamese and Chinese respectively. But ongoing research would be required.
He said the results highlighted the unintended benefits education resources could bring to local and state economies.
“This kind of improvement of the education quality can benefit the housing market, which can further benefit the wealth of the local area,” Dr Liang said.
“It’s a value capture, because the government invests in education and they can collect it back in other channels like taxation.”
Dr Liang said bilingual education was beneficial to the mental development of children, and gave VCE students a big advantage since they could study up to three foreign languages.
Collings Northcote director Christian Gravias said buyers were willing to pay “that extra 5 or 10 per cent just for a school zone”.
Marine and Tim Willis with their bilingual daughter, Lucie (6). Picture: Jay Town
Thirteen schools across Melbourne offer official bilingual programs, in which students learn the majority of their subjects in second languages including Mandarin, Japanese and Auslan.
Other schools, including Fitzroy Primary School, offer unofficial bilingual programs.
After realising she wanted daughter Lucie, 6, to have a French connection, Marine Willis joined forces with several other parents who spoke the language to get a French bilingual program at a primary school north of the Yarra River.
Fitzroy Primary did, making it the clear choice for Lucie.
“It was not going to be enough for me to just speak French to her,” Ms Willis said.
“She’s learning how to read and write in French (at Fitzroy Primary), whereas at home, it would be an extra chore I’d have to try and enforce.”
North Melbourne-based Ms Willis and her husband, Tim, were searching for a home closer to Lucie’s school before the coronavirus pandemic halted their plans.
“I know families who were thinking about renting a one-bed apartment just to be in the (French bilingual school) Camberwell Primary zone,” Ms Guillou said. “When people like me want bilingual programs, they will move (and) sacrifice a little bit of extra money.”
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