New Gracemere school to host hundreds of students by 2028, says LNP

After decades of campaigning and being told they did not need a high school, the construction and open dates for a new $10m school has been revealed.

PROPOSED SITE: Gracemere High School could be constructed at this site in 2025 according to the Queensland Government in late 2017.

The LNP has announced an outline for plans to build a new high school for Gracemere, with $10 million in funding released to commence early works.
The new school will be located on the corner of Johnson Road and Lucas Street, and is the first high school to be built in the area.
Construction is expected to begin in mid-2026.

The school will host up to 500 students upon its completion in 2028, and up to 1200 by 2046.
Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek said the high school was a long time in the making.

Gracemere parents Cindy O'Brien, Sarah Summerell and Jessica Lahrs want to see a high school built at Gracemere by 2028 on a lot of land already owned by the Education Department on the corner of Johnson Road and Lucas Street.

“Ten million dollars has been allocated in the mid-year budget for us to work with Rockhampton Regional Council to work on site plans, a master plan and working with them about road transport and the infrastructure that we need to provide for this site,” he said.
Mr Langbroek also raised the issue of hundreds of high school-aged students being forced to commute to and from Rockhampton daily to get an education.
“We’ve got over 560 students from this area that have to get on busses everyday,” he said.

LNP Member for Rockhampton Donna Kirkland also echoed these concerns.

LNP Member for Mirani Glen Kelly, Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek and LNP Member for Rockhampton Donna Kirkland gathered in Gracemere to announce $10 million in funding for a long-awaited new high school.

“Kids tell me, ‘Mrs Kirkland, we’ve got to line up quickly to be the first in line otherwise we’re standing on those busses (to Rockhampton),’ Mrs Kirkland said.

“I have spoken to everyone during the course of the campaign - I’ve spoken to teachers, I’ve spoken to parents, I’ve spoken to a number of stakeholder groups, and it’s unanimous that there needs to be a school that accounts for the growth that our region is going to see.”

In April 2024, Labor Education Minister Di Farmer said there were no plans for a new high school based on data indicating the state secondary student population of Gracemere would grow to only about 800 students by 2046, and that the threshold for the department was “a stable enrolment of 1500 to 1800 students to ensure the school can deliver a broad, modern curriculum”.

Data from the current government now indicates that the school could host between 900 and 1000 in-catchment students by 2046.

Ten million in funding will initiate early construction of the site, provide detailed costings and deliver a master plan.

“We’ll see some shovels in dirt here in 2026, and that’s expected to continue until 2028,” Ms Kirkland said.
Crowded buses, high student to teacher ratios in classrooms, bullying and the overstimulating of children before they even get to a classroom were some of the issues raised by parents when they began fighting for a high school at Gracemere.

Gracemere locals have been pushing for its own high school for almost 30 years, during which time a 3000 signature petition was presented to parliament, and two campaigns for new high schools in Central Queensland were run won.

The small town of Calliope nearby also participated in the push.

Gracemere recorded a population of 12,031 persons in 2021, an impressive leap compared to the population recorded 20 years earlier in 2001 of 4,454.

The population of Gracemere grew from 8,401 in 2011 to 12,031 in 2021 (according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics) and is expected to grow to 14,756 in 2031, an increase of 4.8 per cent, according to the Rockhampton Regional Council’s Economic Profile by Economy.id, which uses a mix of ABS and Census data for its projections.