Brisbane primary school to close to make way for high school students

A shrinking Catholic school in the inner north will close for good at the end of 2026, parents have been told, as Brisbane Catholic Education pursues plans to build a co-ed high school on the site.

Parents of the 73 students at St Mary of the Cross Catholic Primary School in Windsor were sent letters last week explaining the school would be shutting down after next year’s classes.

BCE, which runs the primary school, will instead build a high school there, after a report identified increasing demand for mixed-gender Catholic secondary schools in the inner-city.

The primary school is less than 5km from the Brisbane CBD.Credit: St Mary of the Cross Catholic Primary School

That report, published last year, found there was enough demand for two new co-ed Catholic high schools in Brisbane – “one each on the north and south sides of the city”.

It also noted that operating multiple small inner-city primary schools with “lower than optimal enrolments” was an “inefficient use of [BCE’s] limited capital resources”.

In a statement to Brisbane Times, a BCE spokesperson said the new school would “maintain a thriving Catholic education presence in inner-city Brisbane, tailored to the needs of our growing community”.

“Decisions like this are never easy but we plan for this site to become very important in Brisbane’s future Catholic education offerings,” it said.

The Windsor Catholic primary school sits on Grafton Street, on a block a fraction the size of Windsor State School’s on the opposite side of Lutwyche Road, where about 700 primary students attend.

Children who had started at St Mary of the Cross but cannot finish there have been offered free tuition in the first term of 2027 at other local Catholic schools, and free school uniforms, to compensate for the inconvenience.

BCE said there was capacity for them to move to Holy Cross at Wooloowin, which is less than 1km away, St Columba’s at Wilston and St Ambrose’s at Newmarket.

A firm date for the high school to open was yet to be locked in, with state approvals pending.

As recently as 2021, St Mary of the Cross declared in its annual plan that it was focused on “building enrolments and marketing to the community”.

The document listed increased enrolments and local families seeing the school as a “viable Catholic schooling option” as its success measures. But total enrolments had hovered around 100 in recent years, and were understood to have fallen to 73.

From year five – when Catholic colleges such as Gregory Terrace and Nudgee begin taking their youngest students – the Windsor school’s cohorts dropped, in some years, to single digits.

While there are dozens of Catholic high schools on Brisbane’s northside, many are single-sex and, for some families, prohibitively expensive.

Tuition fees for Nudgee College, for instance – which is run independently, and is not part of BCE – can cost more than $21,000 each year, whereas the BCE-run co-ed Holy Spirit at Fitzgibbon costs about a third as much.

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