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One of Brisbane’s highest-achieving and most expensive schools has opened its gates to primary students for the first time, joining other private-sector schools boosting early buy-in from families.
The first year 5 and 6 students walked through the gates of Brisbane Girls Grammar School’s new primary years campus on Wednesday, across the road from its secondary grounds.
Principal Jacinda Euler Welsh said the school chose to create the new campus just over two years ago.
“More and more parents were looking for years 5 and 6, and essentially, what we found was that the boys’ schools were offering years 5 and 6, and there were far fewer places for girls,” Euler Welsh said.
She said girls’ secondary schools had offered year 5 entry to about 300 students, while boys’ schools offered closer to 2000 year 5 places.
The new campus cost about $30 million to build and mirrors the school’s main grounds across the road, in both values and visuals. Tuition fees alone would set a family back $29,316 for the year.
“When you look at the arch – the iconic Girls Grammar arches at the front of the school – you’ll see within the junior school they’re at two-thirds’ scale,” Euler Welsh said.
“They’re an appropriate size for the younger girls, but they keep the two sides of the school connected.”
Professor Helen Proctor, who specialises in schooling policy at the University of Sydney, said private schools opening primary-years campuses were hoping to buy loyalty.
“They’re competing with public schools, which are a lot less expensive, and they’re competing with the other private schools,” she said.
“It’s a financial decision, [but] that’s not to say that it’s only a financial decision.”
Proctor said parents were increasingly shopping around for the school that best matched their children, and now had more money to do so in the private sector.
“Maybe 30 or 40 years ago, parents would have either sent their kids to the local public school or – if they were Catholic or private school parents – they would have just sent their kids to the local Catholic school or the private school that they had some kind of affiliation with,” she said.
She said private high schools were now keen to give students and families a taste of their offerings ahead of the secondary years, which cost more for both parents and schools.
“They can get young students accustomed to the ways of the school, the culture of the school, and embrace them early so they’re less likely to go to other schools for high school,” she said.
Anna Marsden, whose daughter Lucy began grade 5 at Girls Grammar this year after leaving Milton State School, said the timing was “just serendipitous”.
“We always wanted to go to Girls Grammar, so we had put her down when she was very young,” Marsden said.
“As soon as we had the opportunity to suggest that she could possibly go into the first intake [of the new school] … we jumped at the chance.”
Across Brisbane, eight other independent and Catholic high schools have introduced year 5 entry in the past four years – beginning with St Rita’s College.
Proctor said the flipside of earlier entrance at sought-after high schools was a retreat from local primary schools, both state and Catholic.
Trevor Cobbold, national convenor of the public school lobby group Save our Schools, said the boosting of private school enrolments was increasing social segregation.
“It’s hollowing out middle-class, high-income families from public schools,” he said.
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