Can you please tell me how many schools there are in Australia,
preferably divided by State and classified by primary/secondary and
private/public (if this information is available)

Dear smartypantsco-ga;

Thank you for allowing me an opportunity to answer your interesting
question.

THE BUREAU OF ASTRALIAN STATISTICS, a government entity, offers these
and other interesting statistical summaries, presumably the most
current information considering the authoritative source: (examples)

“In August 2002, there were 9,632 schools in Australia, of which 6,969
(72.4%) were government schools and 2,663 (27.6%) were non-government
schools.”

“In 2002 there were 3,301,776 full-time school students, 68.4% of whom
attended government schools”

“In 2002 there were 121,647 Indigenous full-time school students”

http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/lookupMF/1E44BCDEF87BCA2FCA2568A9001393E7

You may find this document, entitled YEAR BOOK AUSTRALIA 2003, to be
particularly informative, although obviously incomplete in that it
does not yet include statistics for the entire 2003-2004 school year.
The tables indicate the number of students attending each year of
primary, secondary and government or non-government school (the latter
two are how Australia refers to public or private institutions,
respectively)

http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/03CBF16BAC48235ECA256CAE000FF0DB

AUSSIE.COM.AU, an Australian directory, lists 11,460 separate contact
numbers for schools but it should be noted that some schools are
listed more than once, just as they are in American and other
directories (primary school office, secondary school office,
administrative offices, gymnasium, etc). The good thing though is that
they are listed by suburb and state and broken down to primary and
secondary schools:

AUSSIE.COM.AU – PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS
http://aussie.com.au/cgi-shl/foxweb.exe/pages/browse_apo?476
(Notice at the top of the page where it says REFINE SEARCH you can
arrange the results to show only the states you are most interested
in, or groups all the schools in one particular state together simply
by choosing the desired state and clicking FIND IT)

Here is a brief summary of what I found in the directory in terms of
total contacts regard to primary and secondary schools alone, listed
by state and/or territory:

VICTORIA – 2551
NEW SOUTH WALES – 3333
WESTERN AUSTRALIA – 1413
QUEENSLAND – 2487
SOUTH AUSTRALIA – 951
TASMANIA – 259
NORTHERN TERRITORY – 291
AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY – 175


If you are interested in all manner of schools, you can find the
directory of subcategories here. As you can clearly see one should
come prepared - you could easily spend a LONG time here looking at
them all, thus your question as it turns out, is in reality quite a
complicated one indeed. At any rate, if you are inclined to do so,
here is the link:

AUSSIE.COM.AU – SOCIETY AND EDUCATION
http://aussie.com.au/cgi-shl/foxweb.exe/pages/browse_apo?465

(This link includes these types of schools, educational organizations,
companies, research, etc):

Adult and Community Education 
Alternative 
Companies 
Educational Consultants 
Higher Education 
On line Teaching and Learning 
Open Learning and Distance Education 
Organizations 
Pre-School and Kindergarten 
Primary & Secondary Education 
Research and Development 
Special Schools 
Universities 
Various
Vocational Education and Training 

In addition, here is the list of Christian Schools, mission
organizations, and Bible Colleges of Australia listed by state:

WHICH CHRISTIAN SCHOOL
http://www.whichchristian.com.au/schoolbystate.html

You can see then that the government report, while probably accurate,
is probably not inclusive of a wide variety of extracurricular,
elective, trade and vocational schools or organizations that could be
construed as “schools” by entities other than the Australian
government. Having said that, you will likely find that there are many
more schools than the 9,362 reported officially in 2002, but probably
very near that exact number if one were to consider only the primary,
secondary and government / non-government schools aimed at the
routine, government mandated education of children only.

Below you will find that I have carefully defined my search strategy
for you in the event that you need to search for more information. By
following the same type of searches that I did you may be able to
enhance the research I have provided even further. I hope you find
that that my research exceeds your expectations. If you have any
questions about my research please post a clarification request prior
to rating the answer. Otherwise, I welcome your rating and your final
comments and I look forward to working with you again in the near
future. Thank you for bringing your question to us.

Best regards;
Tutuzdad-ga


INFORMATION SOURCES

Defined above

SEARCH STRATEGY


SEARCH ENGINE USED:

Google ://www.google.com


SEARCH TERMS USED:

“NUMBER OF SCHOOLS” AUSTRALIA

“NUMBER OF SCHOOLS IN AUSTRALIA”

“NUMBER OF AUSTRALIAN SCHOOLS”

SITE:AU “NUMBER OF PRIMARY SCHOOLS”

SITE:AU “NUMBER OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS”

SITE:AU “NUMBER OF PRIVATE SCHOOLS”

SITE:AU “NUMBER OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS”

SITE:AU “NUMBER OF RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS”

SITE:AU SCHOOLS “BY STATE”

SITE:AU SCHOOLS “BY TERRITORY”

Thank you for your research. This is exactly what I was looking for,
and your reply was exceptionally prompt!