Collinsville State High School tops the state for highest rate of suspensions

A Bowen Basin high school topped the state for all the wrong reasons, despite being the smallest high school in Queensland.

Collinsville State High School, QLD.

A Whitsunday school has topped the states for all the wrong reasons.

Collinsville State High School has 113 enrolled students, but in the last year handed out 92 short term suspensions.

This nets it a suspension rate of almost 85 per cent, the highest in Queensland.

The school also handed out two long term suspensions and two exclusions.

Collinsville State High is the smallest stand alone high school in Queensland and services years 7 to 12 in the Collinsville and Scottville area.

It had the highest rate of disciplinary absences among Queensland’s 341 state high schools, and recorded a dramatic increase on the previous two years, rising from 45 in 2022 and 84 in 2023.

Teacher’s Professional Association Queensland President Scott Stanford said “it’s important to note those 96 suspensions (at Collinsville State High School), for example, could be 30 children suspended three times”.

Queensland Secondary Principals’ Association President Mark Breckenridge said suspending and excluding students was, more often than not, a last resort.

“Principals will try everything else before removing a student from school for a period of time,” he said.

Collinsville is a small mining community in the Bowen Basin and Whitsunday LGA.

Mr Breckenridge said if any behaviour was a danger to the physical or mental wellbeing of others, principals needed to take appropriate steps.

“Principals have an obligation to maintain a safe and orderly learning and working environment,” he said.

The next Mackay-Whitsunday school on the statewide was Pioneer State High School in Andergrove, which had 45 per cent suspension rate.

Out of a student body of more than 560 total enrolments, the school handed out 234 short term suspensions, 12 long term suspensions and nine exclusions.

Mackay Northern Beaches State High School had a suspension rate of 37 per cent.

Following Pioneer State High School was the Mackay Northern Beaches State High School with a 37 per cent suspension rate.

With just under 1000 total enrolments, the school handed out 335 short term suspensions.

Overall, the 51,245 disciplinary absences recorded across Queensland high schools last year were down on the three-year high of 59,773 in 2023.

But Mr Stanford said that did not necessarily mean behaviour among high school students was improving.

“Behaviour, I believe, is getting worse – we need to start looking at the way children are being brought up and their value systems,” he said.

For the full story about almost 1500 state high school students exclusions and more than 51,000 disciplinary absences across Queensland, read the statewide story.