The high school usually owns the neighbourhood name
We found ten Ontario neighbourhoods where an elementary and a secondary school share the neighbourhood's name. In nine, the secondary school serves more of the neighbourhood — often far more. Six are written up below; the other four are named in the method note.
- 10
- Neighbourhoods that qualified
- 6
- Written up here
- 4
- Cities
- 59%
- Widest coverage gap
Unionville, Markham
- 10 of 226
- Zoned for Unionville PS
- 0 of 226
- Zoned for Unionville Meadows PS
- 111 of 226
- Zoned for Unionville HS
- 226
- Homes for sale here
Why it made the Shortlist
Unionville is the only neighbourhood here carrying its name on three separate schools, and it is the largest on the list by active inventory. Unionville High School is zoned for roughly half those listings. Unionville Public School is zoned for a small fraction of them, and Unionville Meadows Public School — the third to carry the name — is currently zoned for none of them at all.
We think Unionville is the clearest case of a name doing work the boundary does not. A buyer searching "Unionville schools" will find three schools carrying the name and one of them covers about half the homes on the market. The other two are, for most of this neighbourhood, not the assigned school.
Markham has repeatedly redrawn boundaries in this area as new housing has come online, and Unionville is large enough that the split can move materially in a single review. Confirm the assigned school for a specific address with York Region DSB before making an offer.
Woburn, Toronto
- 2 of 108
- Zoned for Woburn Junior PS
- 28 of 108
- Zoned for Woburn Collegiate Institute
- 108
- Homes for sale here
Was 3 of 107 when we published on 2026-08-27.
Why it made the Shortlist
Woburn is one of Toronto's larger Scarborough neighbourhoods and both of its namesake schools cover a minority of it. Woburn Collegiate Institute is zoned for about a quarter of the active listings; Woburn Junior Public School is zoned for a handful.
Our read is that Woburn is where the neighbourhood name is least useful as a school shortcut. Neither namesake covers most of the neighbourhood, so the name tells a buyer almost nothing about which school an address is actually zoned for. This is a neighbourhood where the address lookup matters more than the listing's community label.
Woburn's listing count is high enough that the ratio is stable week to week, but the neighbourhood spans several elementary boundaries, so two homes on the same street can be zoned differently. Check the specific address, not the neighbourhood.
Clarkson, Mississauga
- 29 of 107
- Zoned for Clarkson PS
- 65 of 107
- Zoned for Clarkson SS
- 107
- Homes for sale here
Why it made the Shortlist
Clarkson shows the pattern at its most typical. The secondary school is zoned for well over half the neighbourhood's active listings; the elementary school of the same name covers roughly a quarter. Both sit inside the neighbourhood; only one of them serves most of it.
We would treat Clarkson Secondary as the school the neighbourhood name genuinely refers to, and Clarkson Public as one elementary option among several. Buyers who assume the two travel together are the ones most likely to be surprised.
Clarkson's listing mix is unusually varied — the neighbourhood runs from the GO station to the lake — so the elementary split reflects real geographic spread rather than a boundary quirk. It is unlikely to converge.
Lorne Park, Mississauga
- 30 of 73
- Zoned for Lorne Park PS
- 73 of 73
- Zoned for Lorne Park SS
- 73
- Homes for sale here
Why it made the Shortlist
Lorne Park is the widest split on this list. Lorne Park Secondary School is zoned for every active listing in the neighbourhood. Lorne Park Public School, carrying the same name, is zoned for a minority of them — the largest gap between two namesake schools anywhere in this set.
This is the pattern at its most extreme, and the one we would point a buyer to first. In Lorne Park the secondary school genuinely is the neighbourhood's school. The elementary school of the same name is not, and the shared name is the only reason anyone would assume otherwise.
A boundary that currently covers the whole neighbourhood has nowhere to go but inward. Lorne Park Secondary's coverage is a present fact, not a guarantee — enrolment pressure is exactly what triggers a review.
Dundas, Hamilton
- 19 of 47
- Zoned for Dundas Central PS
- 43 of 47
- Zoned for Dundas Valley SS
- 47
- Homes for sale here
Why it made the Shortlist
Dundas is a distinct town within Hamilton and both namesakes sit in it, but they cover very different shares. Dundas Valley Secondary School is zoned for almost every active listing in Dundas. Dundas Central Public School is zoned for well under half.
We read Dundas as the case where the pattern is least surprising and most useful. The secondary school serves the town because the town is the catchment. The elementary school serves the old core. Both facts are legible from the map, which is not true of most entries here.
Dundas Central is one of Hamilton's older downtown schools. Boards review small central elementary schools more often than large suburban ones, and its boundary is the one most likely to change.
Malvern, Toronto
- 12 of 116
- Zoned for Malvern Junior PS
- 0 of 116
- Zoned for Malvern Collegiate Institute
- 116
- Homes for sale here
Was 10 of 118 when we published on 2026-08-27.
Why it made the Shortlist
Malvern is the exception that explains the rule. Malvern Junior Public School is zoned for a small share of the neighbourhood's listings. Malvern Collegiate Institute is zoned for none of them — because it is not in Malvern. The collegiate sits in the Beaches, on the other side of Toronto, and shares the name by coincidence rather than geography.
We included Malvern precisely because it breaks the pattern. A name match is not a location match, and this is the case where a reader who trusted the name alone would end up looking at a school on the other side of the city. It is the strongest argument in this piece for checking the boundary rather than the name.
Nothing about this will change, because it is not a boundary artefact — it is two unrelated places with the same name. Treat any "Malvern" school result as needing a location check first.
Every neighbourhood in the DistrictIQ community registry that (a) currently has at least ten active residential listings for sale, and (b) shares its name — as a whole word sequence, not a substring — with both an elementary and a secondary school that publishes a regular-track attendance boundary. For each school we counted how many of that neighbourhood's active listings fall inside its regular-track boundary. Ten neighbourhoods met both conditions.
Which neighbourhoods qualified is arithmetic — the ten are every neighbourhood that met the test above. Which six we wrote up, the order they appear in, and what we say about each, is our judgement.
Also qualified, not written up here: Meadowvale, Mississauga; Ancaster, Hamilton; West Hill, Toronto; Weston, Toronto.
- Source
- Active For-Sale residential listings, TRREB / PropTx MLS® IDX
- Geography
- Toronto, Mississauga, Markham and Hamilton
The counts on this page resolve from current for-sale inventory (as of September 2, 2026), so they move with the market. The neighbourhoods on this list and the analysis of each were fixed on August 27, 2026 and are not regenerated when inventory changes. Where a figure has moved since publication we say so beside it. If a figure and a sentence disagree, trust the figure.
EQAO results are provided for informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as a ranking of school quality. Academic outcomes are only one factor families may wish to consider. EQAO results shown reflect the 2024–2025 assessment.
School and assessment data is sourced from the Ontario Ministry of Education, the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO), Ontario Open Data, and the applicable public and Catholic district school boards across the regions we cover (Southern Ontario).
School information — including school boundaries, eligibility, EQAO results, programs and enrolment — is provided for general informational purposes only and may be inaccurate or out of date. Boundaries, eligibility, programs and enrolment can change at any time. EQAO figures reflect past assessment results, are shown per test relative to the city-wide average, are not a ranking, and do not predict any student's outcome. Always confirm current school boundaries and eligibility directly with the applicable school board before relying on this information.