Why so many Brisbane schools are turning 150

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There’s a good reason so many Brisbane schools are turning 150 this year.

In 1875, primary school was made mandatory in Queensland, triggering an explosion of investment in education for the state’s capital.

The first of four primary schools opening in Brisbane that year, Brisbane Central State School, welcomed its first students in January.

Brisbane Central State School’s heritage hall, built in 1874, is still used for school activities.

“Originally, there were three schools on this site: there was a Leichhardt Street Boys’ School, a Leichhardt Street Girls’ School, and a Leichhardt Street Infants’ School,” BCSS Principal Cassandra Clarke said.

The school’s main hall, built in 1874, remains, along with other heritage-protected structures, including the school’s original bell, which students are allowed to ring when they graduate.

“We have to give credit to the school with all its principals [and] teachers in the past because without that history, we wouldn’t be having an alumni group that’s coming out now to be proud of where they went to school,” Clarke said.

Other state primary schools to open 150 years ago include West End State School, Ferny Grove State School, and Kelvin Grove State School, which joined with the local high school to become Kelvin Grove State College in 2002.

As one of a handful of state schools operating on Brisbane’s south side, West End State School taught students from various cultures, adopting the slogan “We all smile in the same language” when the local primary and infants schools merged in 1995.

The school introduced a Greek dancing program in 1974, which continues to feature prominently in Brisbane’s Paniyiri Festival each year.

The inner-south school lost one of its oldest structures – a 120-year-old fig tree – in 2014, which former principal and current 150th anniversary committee chair Judy Thompson said had been a key part of the school’s identity.

Former West End State School long-time teacher Mary Skarparis and former principal Judy Thompson hold an image of the fig tree that stood for more than a century on the site.

“It became a symbol of the strong roots and traditions, and just that protection, that comfort, and that welcome,” she said.

The site of the tree is now a meeting place in the centre of the campus, and the school’s current emblem and new song feature the tree.

Thompson also worked as a principal of Kelvin Grove State College from 1999 to 2008, organising the school’s 125th celebration in 2000.

“When Kelvin Grove started, [it] started down the bottom of the hill at Newmarket Road as a provisional school. Then the government, in the 1870s, set aside 108 acres of land on that hill from Kelvin Grove Road all the way down and called it Victoria Park,” Thompson said.

Kelvin Grove State Provisional School, around 1900.

“That area was gazetted in the 1870s for education and sport.”

The school’s current campus, abutting QUT, is the site of the original Kelvin Grove Road Provisional State School. Kelvin Grove State High School was opened almost a century later in 1961.

While state high schools began opening in the early 1910s, they became more widespread about the middle of the 20th century. Before this period, students would either pass a state scholarship exam – which was introduced by the Department of Education in 1873 and covered school costs – or join the workforce.

Secondary schools running at this time included grammar and Catholic schools, and those run by the Christian Brothers, which in Brisbane meant St James College, until St Joseph’s College, Gregory Terrace opened in July 1875.

For Gregory Terrace, classes were first taught well away from its namesake Spring Hill campus in St Stephen’s Chapel, now part of the Cathedral of St Stephen, with work starting on the school’s Spring Hill campus in early 1876.

When that opened, it was originally a boarding school, but those students were later moved to St Joseph’s Nudgee College in 1891.

A St Joseph’s College, Gregory Terrace cricket team in 1915.

Brisbane-based author and historian Sophie Church has written several books collating the histories of schools in Brisbane and south-east Queensland, including for Gregory Terrace this year, and said she was “particularly struck” with the influence the school had on its students.

“From very humble beginnings in 1875, Terrace has grown along with the city of Brisbane to become a place that is cherished by generations of its former students,” Church said.

Brisbane’s oldest grammar school, Brisbane Grammar School, also had part of its campus annexed in 1875 to expand education opportunities for girls, with Brisbane Girls Grammar School the result.

Brisbane Girls Grammar School’s main building, built across several years in the 1880s.

While convent girls’ schools already existed at the time – including All Hallows’ School, the oldest in Brisbane – the idea of a girls’ grammar school was strongly championed by then-premier Sir Charles Lilley.

“At the time, the idea of educating girls was considered so bold it was labelled a ‘radical experiment’ in the Queensland Courier,” Brisbane Girls Grammar School principal Jacinda Euler Welsh said.

“In the past 150 years, the way we teach, and even what we teach, has changed enormously, but what hasn’t changed is our intent.”

Lilley laid a time capsule on the campus in 1883, which remains hidden on site, despite efforts to track it down and unearth it.