Furious St Paul’s parents’ school fee threat after high-profile principal axed

More rallies are being planned and there is a suggestion parents may withhold school fees unless the powerful Anglican Church reinstates a principal sacked from a prestigious Brisbane school.

• Changes: New leaders appointed

A vocal parental group protesting against the sacking of St Paul’s School principal is refusing to give up – with suggestions to withhold school fees unless the powerful Anglican Church reinstates Paul Browning.

More rallies are in the pipeline, with face masks being made for people who want to support the cause but are said to be afraid of being identified.

“Bring Back Browning” T-shirts and other merchandise have also been ordered.

The parents are committed to more action after the church advised the school community on Monday afternoon of a new leadership team, comprising three top-level staff in place of the one headmaster who was cut loose in mid-September.

Hundreds of students and parents protesting outside St Paul’s School after principal Paul Browning was sacked.

One parent said they were worried school fees would soar in 2024 to pay for the new team, which includes an executive principal, an acting principal and an education consultant.

Traditionally, executive principals are employed when there is more than one school to oversee. This is not the case with St Paul’s, which has only one campus, in Bald Hills.

Bishop Cam Venables said he hoped the news would “build a more positive approach towards the future” after “a disruptive and unhappy couple of weeks”.

Suzanne Bain will be executive principal. She is a member of the audit risk and compliance committee for the Brisbane Diocese and a former principal of St John’s Anglican College in Forest Lake.

Protests outside St Paul’s School.

John O’Sullivan Williams will step in as acting principal. He is a former deputy at Saint Stephen’s on the Gold Coast and has been most recently working in the Anglican Church’s head office in Ann Street, Brisbane.

Victorian education consultant Simon Gipson, brought in immediately after the sacking of Dr Browning, will stay on to advise on strategy and culture.

As The Courier-Mail has exclusively reported, the church said Dr Browning was sacked for refusing to stop commercialising a multimillion-dollar learning tool that failed to meet federal government standards and therefore would have jeopardised federal funding for all of its 11 schools in Queensland.

Dr Browning has maintained the Realms of Thinking program was being monetised to help pay a current $7.2 million liability bill for compensation of victims of historic child sexual abuse at the school in the 1980s and 1990s.

The church disputes this.

Former St Paul’s headmaster Paul Browning. Picture: Mark Cranitch.

Dr Browning was notified in March his contract would not be renewed for another five years from 2024. He was ordered to stop commercialising Realms of Thinking in April.

He later lodged a bullying complaint against the Anglican Schools Commission before asking the church in August to give him the intellectual property for Realms of Thinking so he could sell it himself after leaving St Paul’s.

He asked for it as part of his severance package so he could “commercialise it independently as my new employment prospect”.

He offered to lease it to St Paul’s for at least five years free of charge at an estimated saving to the school of $451,000.

The church has since said Realms of Thinking would remain with the school.