About MyCatchment

Every Vancouver home search starts with the same two questions: “Which school catchment is this address in?” and “Is the school actually good?” Finding reliable answers usually means jumping across multiple websites, outdated maps, and scattered reports.

MyCatchment pulls those answers onto one map. Type an address and you'll see both catchments (elementary and secondary), how each school's results have trended over the last five years, how full it is, what programs it runs, and how stable its boundary looks. That answers the school question. The address itself is what we're building out next: the character of the neighbourhood, parks and amenities within walking distance, how the area is evolving over time. Signals that tell you whether the location itself is a long-term fit, not just a catchment match.

What you'll see for each address

Public catchment (elementary + secondary)

The elementary and secondary catchment polygons that contain the address.
Combined assigned-schools score, individual school evidence, and multi-year trend.
FSA scores (overall plus Gr 4 and 7 components where available).
Capacity and utilization, with the latest snapshot year.
Specialty programs (IB, mini-school, AP, fine arts, sports).
French Immersion (early or late entry).
Walking distance from the pin to each assigned school.

Private schools across the region

Typology (Catholic or Independent) and grade span.
School-academic evidence where published.
Tuition, where published.
Link to the school's official site, where available.

How the map is coloured

By default each public catchment is shaded by its Combined assigned-schools score(0–10) — dark red for lower-scoring schools, yellow in the middle, green for the highest. Grey means we don't have enough school data to score the address yet. The combined assigned-schools score is elementary-led — it weights the assigned elementary school more heavily than the high school that serves it — and is price-free (it never factors in home prices, family density, or any other neighbourhood signal). Click any catchment to open the full school card.

Other encodings — capacity used, 5-year enrolment trend, or boundary-change risk — are available through the family-profile flow on first visit (pick "class size + stability" or "short commute") or by appending ?colour=value (the value lens) / ?colour=trend / ?colour=utilization / ?colour=risk to the URL.

About the boundary-change risk encoding

When colour-by is set to risk, each catchment is shaded green, amber, or red from two signals: current capacity used and the 5-year enrolment trend. The risk it flags isn't losing a seat — it's catchment boundaries getting redrawn while you live there.

Over-capacity ≠ losing your seat.Under BC's School Act, an in-catchment student is guaranteed a seat. The school board absorbs overflow with portables, converted spaces, and refused out-of-catchment transfers — nobody inside the catchment gets turned away.

The real risk is boundary review.If a school stays chronically over capacity, the district can redraw catchments. Kids already enrolled usually keep their seats; future kindergarten cohorts may get reassigned. If the whole reason you chose an address was the school it fed into, that's the scenario that matters.

Green: under 85% capacity and stable. Amber: 85–100% or rising. Red: at or over 100% — boundary-change risk is non-trivial.

All map colours are heuristics built on public data; the school board's planning team is the authoritative source for any decision.

What this doesn't replace

Official enrolment — confirm with the official school locator before any real-estate decision.
A complete picture of school fit. The combined assigned-schools score is one signal among many — it doesn't capture program fit, peer group, or your child's specific needs.
Specialty-program outcomes (French Immersion, Montessori, gifted) or admissions to programs with seat caps.
Private-school admissions or tuition decisions — links out to each school's site where available.

Methodology

Every signal on the map and in the school card comes from publicly available data. The base map uses OpenStreetMap.

What's new: We now cover North Vancouver alongside Vancouver. The neighbourhood reads that compare one area to another now weigh it against every area we map, so a few of those comparisons shifted as North Vancouver came in. Each school's own grade is measured against schools across the province, so it did not change with the wider coverage.

Combined assigned-schools score (0–10): A price-free blend of the address's assigned elementary and secondary schools, scored 0–10 — elementary-led (60/40). Each school is measured against every BC school of its level, so the number reads as “better than X% of BC schools,” not just a rank within Vancouver. It has no neighbourhood, demographic, or price inputs of any kind — see Value for the price lens. A school or address with no published results reads “not assessed yet” — never a low grade.
Individual school score (0–10): Each school's own 0–10 grade, measured against every BC school of its level — so a grade reads as “better than X% of BC schools,” not just a rank within Vancouver. For elementary it's built on FSA results (the share meeting or exceeding expectations); for high schools it blends provincial Grade-10 proficiency, the graduation rate, and the breadth of specialty programs. The card also shows the underlying figures next to the district average. A school with no published results reads “not assessed yet” — never a low grade. The combined assigned-schools score above blends the elementary and secondary versions of this figure for one address.
Value (0–10): Quality for the price — how the combined assigned-schools score compares to the median assessed home value in that catchment. A higher Value means you get more school quality relative to what homes cost there. Grey (no Value shown) means we don't have home-price data for that area; it is never a sign of low quality.
FSA score: Foundation Skills Assessment — a provincial standardized test in Grade 4 and Grade 7. Scores are scaled so that 500 equals the provincial average. We show a Gr 4 + 7 average where per-school data is published; otherwise a district-aggregate fallback.
Graduation rate: Six-year completion rate for secondary schools — the share of students who graduate within six years of starting Grade 8.
Capacity used: Current enrolment divided by the school's published capacity, from the latest district capacity report. Over 100% means portables, split classes, or refused out-of-catchment transfers.
Enrolment trend (5-yr): Average annual percentage change in enrolment over the last five published years. Sustained growth puts pressure on capacity, which is what triggers boundary-review processes.
Boundary-change risk: A combined signal from capacity used and the 5-year enrolment trend. Lower: under 85% capacity and stable. Medium: 85–100% or rising. Higher: at or over 100% — boundary redrawing becomes non-trivial. Tiers are relative, not absolute danger levels.

Sources & licences

MyCatchment is built entirely on open government and open data. The licences behind that data ask us to include the following acknowledgements:

Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – British Columbia. Licence

Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada. Licence

Adapted from Statistics Canada, Census Profile, 2021 Census of Population (Catalogue 98-401-X2021006), reference date May 11, 2021. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product. Licence

Adapted from Statistics Canada, Proximity Measures Database, 2021. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product. Licence

Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Vancouver. Licence

Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – North Vancouver. Licence

Independent project, not affiliated with any school board, data provider, or real-estate agency. Terms of use ·