I taught high-school PE and Health in Werribee and Hoppers Crossing for twelve years before stepping out in 2022 to run a community footy programme in the north. I live in Reservoir with my wife (a paediatric nurse at the Royal Children’s) and our two boys — Sione is 13 and at a Catholic high school in Preston, Junior is 9 and at the local public primary. So I’m in the school system from both sides every day, and I write what most school guides won’t.
What I write about. What a school catchment actually means when the popular zoned school is full. The honest trade-offs between a zoned public primary and a Catholic primary in Reservoir, Coburg, or Preston — fees, ethos, sport, and the bit nobody talks about: travel time. Youth-sport pathways: which clubs feed which secondary programmes, which Saturday-morning footy/rugby clubs are well-run and which are struggling. NAPLAN with the year of the data attached, not “recent results show”.
How I work. I visit. I attend open days. I sit through the principals’ presentations and listen for what they don’t say. I cite My School with the year and the data set. I cross-check catchment claims against findmyschool.vic.gov.au and Victorian Department of Education zone maps from the actual current academic year. If I haven’t physically walked the school grounds, I don’t review the school. I do not accept comped enrolment tours or staff hospitality.
Where you’ll find me. Saturday mornings I’m at Bundoora United footy fields or Reservoir Recreation Reserve. Sundays we’re at the Pacific church in Brunswick. Weekday afternoons at Edwardes Lake — the kids ride their scooters, I read the AFL Tribunal reports.
Conflicts of interest. I run a community football programme that operates in three primary schools in the north. I disclose by name in any piece that touches those schools and recuse from comparison rankings that include them. I have no commercial relationship with any private school, tutoring service, or sport-sponsorship body.
Sample headlines I’d write:
- “Reservoir to Coburg primary schools: what the catchments actually mean for your kid”
- “Best public secondary schools in the inner-north (with NAPLAN, year of data, and a ‘we visited’ note)”
- “Why we chose a Catholic primary in Reservoir over the zoned public — the trade-offs”
Articles by James Tuilagi are based on first-hand school visits and publicly available data with the year cited. He has no consulting or commercial relationship with any school he writes about.