Brisbane’s schools are bursting at the seams. It’s only going to get worse

“It’s just really reactive planning, as opposed to proactive planning.”

That’s how a parent at one of Brisbane’s biggest schools describes the government’s approach to our bursting-at-the-seams education system, where large school cohorts are managed by split start times and staggered lunch breaks.

Suburban Futures director Ross Elliott agrees the city’s social infrastructure has not been keeping pace with population growth .

“I think in the last 10 to 20 years, we’ve spent too much time patting ourselves on the back saying how wonderful population growth is for the economy,” Elliott said. “At the same time, [the government] wasn’t looking at the demands on schools, on hospitals – on all infrastructure.”

Pallara State School in Brisbane’s south is the city’s fourth-biggest state primary school and an example of an institution juggling surging demand and limited space.

The split-campus school, which caters to more than 1300 students, was built in 1956 but has had multiple expansions since, most recently a new junior campus for prep and year 1.

The school’s senior campus – for years 2 to 6 – is located 2.5 kilometres down the road.

Before the new campus opened in January, P&C treasurer Chad Redgwell said the school used demountables for years.

He said it was forced to cancel its athletics carnival in 2024 due to limited space caused by demountables on the oval.

When the new junior campus opened, there was no oval, hall, or library for the first term.

“They didn’t want to delay the kids from entering that site because they would have then had to go to the senior school site, spend one term down there, then move the kids down,” Redgwell said.

The large student body was previously managed by splitting start and finish times, as well as lunch breaks.

“So you can imagine you had kids in the classroom trying to learn while the other half of the school’s playing outside,” Redgwell said.

“Because there wasn’t enough play space for the kids at lunchtime, they were running into each other, they were fighting over the space – there were a lot of fights.”