When my eldest was in kindergarten, that was the plan. She would lead her siblings to Glebe High. We ignored the whispers in the playground about our local school.

Then the whispers turned into headlines. Already, there’d been a well-publicised arson attack in 1987; and links to gangs which sold stolen sports wear. By 1991, a playground brawl left one kid in hospital with a broken jaw and a fractured skill; and with it the headline that gang violence had come to Glebe High. In 1994, three students in years 7, 11 and 12 were suspended from the school after a student was stabbed with a penknife and three others were injured in a schoolyard fight during recess.

That was a definite no from us then. Our eldest was tiny, slender and unlikely to come out on top in a playground brawl. That was only one of our concerns. At that stage in her life, she was still pretty quiet. Getting attention in the classroom would be a challenge and her high school needed to be a place where academic pursuits mattered. The school’s academic results were terrible. Yes, yes, academics matter to our family. In the majority of instances for students straight out of school, the ATAR still matters (thank heavens that's changing).

None of our three children ended up going to the local high school. By the time Glebe High was transformed into Sydney Secondary College, my kids had gone elsewhere. These days, that school (and its many campuses) does very well, a testament to increased funding, better premises, committed staff and parents.

There are many reasons for parents to make the choice to send their kids to out-of-area schools – and on the face of it, we think, so self indulgent, so individualistic. But Helen Proctor says it’s ok to put your family’s needs first. “Do what’s best for your own children but when it comes to voting, vote for what’s best for all children.”

This is the best advice I’ve ever heard about schooling, which is no wonder since Proctor, with others, actually did write the book on how parents should choose schools: School Choice: How parents negotiate the new school market in Australia.

Parents are expected to be wise and thoughtful, be well-informed and discerning about an education system which is complex, where the best information is not really about NAPLAN or HSC results but about something less concrete. It is not possible to know where your child will be happy and maybe we also need to understand that happiness, while lovely, is not the only thing.

And school choice, which was once about whether you would send your child to a public, private or Catholic school, is now far bigger than that – maybe 10 or 20 kilometres bigger. Blame the former NSW minister for education Terry Metherell, who, when he completely rewrote the education act, also rewrote the rules for zoning. So long as your target school had room, you could send your kid anywhere. Metherell’s changes are still having an impact 30 years later. As the Herald reported on Monday, just under half of all NSW public high school students go to schools other than the ones for which they are zoned.

Procter remembers quite a few heated conversations she had with friends when the time came to send her children to high school 10 years ago. She ended up sending her daughters to Willoughby Girls, which a friend whose daughters now go there described this way – "as close to a private school as you can get without going private". It also does well academically, as do the majority of public high schools in middle-to-high socioeconomic areas of NSW. Just check out the HSC results for Killara High, for Cherrybrook Tech, for the Northern Beaches Secondary College.

There’s a good reason we make these choices. We think we are doing the right thing. Let’s not beat each other up about them but recognise there are structural problems which it isn’t our job, as  parents, to fix immediately, although as Proctor points out, it is our job as citizens of this state to vote for the party most likely to fund schools to the degree needed, to support teachers. It’s also our job to recognise that while teachers who work in government schools have more insecure work than they have ever had in their lives, it’s hard for them to feel confident about their futures, which impacts our children.

But Proctor also has some specific advice about private schools, particularly when it comes to affordability. Don’t vote with your hip pocket. Don’t imagine that that just because a private school has received a bigger share of subsidies, the fees will be reduced. “They are probably just going to build an extra swimming school,” she says. Make your own choice with your heart but vote with your conscience.

Jenna Price is an academic at the University of Technology Sydney.