In 2025, Ellen Rigbye withdrew her daughter, Charlotte, from a western Brisbane private school in favour of a state school over the river.
Charlotte, a competitive AFL player, had successfully secured selective entry to the city’s newest state school, Brisbane South State Secondary College (BSSSC) at Dutton Park.
“We went along to an AFL Academy open night, where they do a presentation about the school and about the academy, and it just sounded really good,” Ellen said.
Opened in 2021, BSSSC carved large chunks from surrounding secondary catchments – including about a third of Brisbane State High School’s catchment.
The school’s AFL program partners with AFL Queensland and the Brisbane Lions, and Charlotte – now in year 10 – said it was a big draw among her friends.
The school’s other excellence program, the Biomedical Science Academy, attracts students angling for careers in medicine.
“There has been a lot of people who also used to go to State High and then have moved over,” she said.
Enrolment data from February 2026, obtained by this masthead, showed BSSSC grew by 201 students this year – more than Mansfield State High School, which grew the most of any established state school – as its first cohort of students reached year 12.
Charlotte said the school was not “as packed as it can be”, with a smaller-than-normal year 7 cohort.
The school sits at 94.8 per cent of its total built capacity with 1444 students.
Seleneah More, who was involved with the now-defunct inner-south education coalition that helped shape public consultation on the new school, said there was one glaring fault.
“BSSSC was meant to relieve enrolment pressure at Brisbane State High School, and it simply hasn’t done that,” she said.
More, also a member of grassroots community organisation West End Community Alliance, said the community had “raised concerns from the outset” about the issue.
“We consistently warned that placing the school outside the Brisbane State High catchment, alongside only minor boundary changes involving schools like Coorparoo Secondary College and Yeronga State High School, would not solve the problem,” she said.
In 2026, enrolments at Brisbane State High dropped by 19 students, rather than increasing by about 100, as Education Department modelling had predicted.
It grew by 48 students between 2024 and 2025, and by 44 the year before.
State High still exceeds its stated built capacity by 19 per cent – or 588 students. The education department has said previously that it uses “timetabling efficiencies that allow operation above the student enrolment capacity”.
About 92 per cent of students in State High’s catchment attend the school, and another 1000 places are open to selective entry for academic, music, and sporting excellence programs.
Charlotte said the number of out-of-catchment students at BSSSC was already dropping in younger grades, and her mother Ellen said the school was increasingly strict on such placements.
“Really, the way in is through the AFL academy or the biomedical science academy,” she said.
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