The 50 Best High Schools in Brisbane for 2024 – School Rankings

We’re back again this year with a fresh list of Brisbane Schools, and have put in the hours, done the research, and have created the ‘2024 Ultimate Brisbane High School Ranking’ to help you make the right call with your student about the high school they want to graduate from.

What are you waiting for? Check it out below!

How Our 2024 Brisbane School Ranking Works

Top 50 Brisbane Schools 2024 Ranking List

Top Public Schools

Top Private Schools

Top Gender-Streamed Schools

Top 99 ATAR Schools

Top 95 ATAR Schools

Top 90 ATAR Schools

Top 80 ATAR Schools

Top Cost of Living Value Schools

How Our 2024 Brisbane School Ranking Works

Since the introduction of the new ATAR system, the QLD government (and QTAC who is responsible for calculation of ATARs) has ceased publishing individual school performance data publicly, opting instead to release subject-specific information. But at Art of Smart Education, we remain dedicated to providing data-driven insights to assist students and parents in making crucial life decisions.

To achieve this, we have found publicly uploaded ATAR results from each school, regarding their 2023 cohort’s success. This means that we collated each school’s independently released results, in order to get the most accurate picture possible, based on the percentage of students who achieved above an ATAR 80, 90 and 95.

When you compare a school’s performance to the QTAC ATAR distribution report for 2023, you can work out how many times a school performed better than (or worse than) the state’s average.

This final percentage is the actual figure which we use to measure a schools’ ATAR performance, considering the whole cohort.

For example, because The Lakes College had 58% of students above an ATAR 90 and 19% of students above an ATAR 95, we can compare this data to the state average through normalisation and calculate that they did 84% better than the state average!

Top 50 Brisbane Schools 2024 Ranking List

Based purely on academic performance and ATAR results, here are the Top 50 Brisbane School finalists.

Ranking #	School	Outperforming State Percentage 2024	Changes from 2023-2024
1	St Aidan's Anglican Girls' School	251%	▲ 2
2	Brisbane Girls Grammar School	244%	◀ -
3	Brisbane Grammar School	167%	▼ 2
4	Brisbane State High School	160%	◀ -
5	St Joseph's College Gregory Terrace	155%	▲ NEW
5	All Hallows' School	155%	◀ -
7	Anglican Church Grammar School **	153%	▼ 2
8	Mansfield State High School	142%	◀ -
9	Ipswich Grammar School **	140%	▲ NEW
10	St Margaret's Anglican Girls School **	137%	▼ 3
11	Loreto College Coorparoo *	122%	▲ 13
12	Mt St Michael's College **	120%	▼ 2
13	Ormiston College *	116%	▼ 4
14	Somerville House	109%	▼ 3
15	Moreton Bay College *	96%	▲ 13
16	St Rita's College **	95%	▲ 9
17	Villanova College *	90%	▼ 4
18	The Gap State High School **	87%	▲ 3
19	Mount Alvernia College **	86%	▼ 1
20	Marist College Ashgrove **	84%	▼ 1
20	The Lakes College *	84%	▲ 12
20	St John's Anglican College **	84%	▲ 16
23	Sheldon College *	83%	▼ 6
24	St Peters Lutheran College	81%	▲ 5
25	John Paul College	77%	▲ 7
26	Brisbane Boys' College **	76%	▼ 12
27	Ipswich Girls' Grammar School	73%	▼ 15
28	Stuartholme School **	64%	▼ 13
29	Stretton State College **	60%	▲ 7
30	Citipointe Christian College *	51%	▲ 1
31	Indooroopilly State High School *	47%	▲ 8
31	Cannon Hill Anglican College *	47%	▼ 16
33	Northside Christian College *	46%	▼ 10
34	Canterbury College	41%	◀ -
34	Saint Stephen's College *	41%	◀ -
36	St John Fisher College **	37%	▲ 8
37	Redeemer Lutheran College	33%	▼ 7
38	St Joseph's Nudgee College **	24%	▼ 2
39	Kedron State High School **	19%	▲ NEW
39	Prince of Peace Lutheran College *	19%	▲ 6
41	Genesis Christian College	16%	▲ 7
41	Brigidine College *	16%	▲ 5
43	Grace Lutheran College *	10%	▲ 6
43	St Paul's School *	10%	▼ 2
45	Redlands College *	8%	▲ NEW
46	Centenary State High School	-4%	▲ NEW
46	Ambrose Treacy College **	-4%	▲ 4
48	Brisbane Adventist College	-8%	▲ NEW
49	Moreton Bay Boys College *	-10%	▼ 29
50	Mt Maria College **	-14%	▲ NEW

* Any school that exhibits a single asterisk next to its name means the proportion of the cohort achieving an ATAR was not reported.
** Any school that exhibits a double asterisks may mean the “proportion of students achieving an ATAR was lower than similar schools, which may elevate the mean scores reported here.”

Disclaimer: The data and information presented in this article are the result of comprehensive research conducted by Art of Smart. If you wish to use any part of this data or information in your own publications, articles, or reports, you must provide proper attribution by stating the data was produced by Art of Smart Education and linking back to this original article.

About Schools With Potentially Elevated ATAR Performance Data

Part of what makes a school successful is its ability to graduate a cohort through the education system, catering to all needs. At Art of Smart, we recognise that the ATAR is not the only route for educational success.

However, when schools begin streaming students out of the ATAR cohort to prioritise a selection of high-performing students, this can lead to their ATAR performance being inflated. 

This is because when a smaller group of high-performing students are chosen to represent the entire schools “graduating cohort”, a misleading outcome can result with both inflated results and misjudged school reporting.

Our goal is to compare schools as accurately and as fairly as possible. As a result, we’ve sought to account for situations where this ATAR performance inflation may have occurred.

Every school in our Top 50 list was therefore assessed based on its location and socio-economic index using a reliable linear model (with a 73% causation correlation) to find the expected percentage of the cohort that should graduate with an ATAR. We’ve called this the ‘predicted ATAR participation percentage’ for a school.

This predicted ATAR participation percentage is unique for each school and sits between 40-100% of students in the school’s total cohort. 

This illustration visually demonstrates a school which has less than expected ATAR students in their cohort. This indicates that only the most academic students are producing results, meaning the outperformance scores of particular schools may appear higher than what they statistically should be.

However, this is an illustration of a normal ATAR school, where the expected amount of ATAR students are actually graduating, meaning the data is fair and what we’d expect from a given school.

We compared the predicted ATAR participation percentage for each school with historical and publicly available data on their ATAR cohort sizes to determine if the actual 2023 ATAR participation percentage aligns with how a school of any given size and socio-economic position should be performing.

If both predicted and 2023 actual participation percentages are similar, this means that the ATAR outperforming percentage and associated ranking are very unlikely to have been inflated by ATAR cohort streaming, and is a fair reflection of the school’s overall ATAR performance.

If however, there was a gap between the predicted ATAR participation percentage and the likely 2023 actual ATAR percentage, we’ve identified this school with a disclaimer**. This highlights that the school’s ATAR outperformance percentage and associated school ranking may be possibly inflated due to students being streamed out of an ATAR cohort.

If you are a school with an asterisk and you would like to update your ranking accuracy please get in touch with our team at [email protected] with your actual 2023 ATAR cohort size as a percentage of your total Year 12 student cohort.

Top 10 School Trends

• Topping the list we have St Aidan’s Anglican Girls’ School*, a change from last year’s results where we now see the Brisbane Grammar Schools slightly fall in rank. Following that is Brisbane State High, St Joseph’s College and All Hallows’ School.
• A common trend again this year is that many private schools and colleges are taking the top performing spots, with the exceptions of Brisbane, Mansfield and The Gap State High Schools all making the Top 25, representing the best public schools in the Brisbane area.
• Across the board many of the same schools from last year have maintained their spots, with the exceptions of Ipswich Grammar and St Jospeh’s College, who made the Top 10 this year.
• We see in 2024 there was a much smoother distribution in outperformance scores, with no schools apart from the Top 2 achieving a score that was significantly out of range to the others. This is by far the most statistically advanced school ranking table available!

Public vs Private vs Anglican vs Catholic

Private schools took the larger portion of the Top 50 schools this year jumping from 38.9% to 42.3%, with Public schools moving from 18.5% last year, to 13.5% this year, whilst Anglican and Catholic schools also slightly shrunk too.

Now that we know how many schools from each category made it into the Top 50, it would be beneficial to understand how well each category performed.

Note, there was insufficient data to break down schools into each sub-denomination. Lutheran, Presbyterian and Non-Denomination schools have been grouped into the “private” category.

School Type	Average Outperformance	Changes from 2023-2024
Anglican	103%	◀ -
Public	73%	▲ 1
Private	71%	▼ 1
Catholic	60%	◀ -

From the analysis, we can see just how well Anglican Schools have performed in 2023, compared with the other categories, dominating the sector again for the second year in a row. Another key trend is that the average performance of the Public schools in the Top 50 surpassed the average of the Private schools, showing just how competitive public-system education can be.

Top Anglican Schools

Top Catholic Schools

Top Independent Schools

Top Public Schools

Gender Streamed vs Co-Ed

Co-Education schools took up a slight majority of the Top 50 spots this year, with Gender-Streamed schools making up the other 48% on the list!

Now again, it is beneficial for us to grasp the average outperformance of each school sector, compared to the state average!

Note that there was no movement between categories in this year’s rankings compared to last!

Gender Streaming	Average Outperformance
Girls	106%
Boys	88%
Co-Ed	47%

The analysis shows that once again, Girl’s schools have led the academic space, with an average outperformance rate of 106%, compared to the Boys schools at 88%, followed by Co-Ed at 47%!

Top Boys Schools

Top Girls Schools

Top Co-Ed Schools

Top Brisbane School Ranking by ATAR Brackets

We’ve seen how schools performed overall, but not all students and families are looking to achieve a Top 99 ATAR, whilst some students are needing it to get into medicine! Allow us to break down each bracket, and provide some more insight into where might be best for you!

99 ATAR

Ranking #	School	% Above 99 ATAR	Outperforming State %	Changes from 2023-2024
1	Brisbane State High School	17%	580%	▲ 2
2	Anglican Church Grammar School **	14%	460%	◀ -
3	Brisbane Girls Grammar School	13%	439%	▲ 1
4	Brisbane Grammar School	13%	420%	▼ 4
5	St Joseph's College Gregory Terrace	12%	380%	▲ NEW
6	All Hallows' School	10%	300%	▼ 1
7	St Aidan's Anglican Girls' School	9%	260%	▼ 3
7	Mansfield State High School	9%	260%	▼ 1
7	John Paul College	9%	260%	▲ NEW
10	Somerville House	8%	220%	◀ -

Brisbane State High School performed exceptionally well in terms of the students who achieved above an ATAR 99. After that, the candidates follow a very similar order to the Top Schools ranking overall, with the exception of Somerville House, which again managed to make it into the Top 99 ATAR schools.

95 ATAR

Ranking #	School	% Above 95 ATAR	Outperforming State %	Changes from 2023-2024
1	Brisbane Girls Grammar School	62%	396%	▲ NEW
2	Brisbane Grammar School	46%	267%	▼ 1
2	St Aidan's Anglican Girls' School	46%	267%	◀ -
4	St Joseph's College Gregory Terrace	42%	235%	▲ NEW
5	All Hallows' School	41%	227%	▼ 1
6	Anglican Church Grammar School **	40%	219%	◀ -
7	St Margaret's Anglican Girls School **	37%	194%	▼ 5
8	Loreto College Coorparoo	36%	187%	▲ NEW
9	Mansfield State High School	34%	171%	▼ 2

Things begin to shake up in the 95 ATAR category, with Loreto College, Ipswich Grammar and Mansfield State High School climbing the ranks, to prove just how well the top band of students are performing on their campuses.

90 ATAR

Ranking #	School	% Above 90 ATAR	Outperforming State %	Changes from 2023-2024
1	Brisbane Girls Grammar School	85%	240%	◀ -
2	St Aidan's Anglican Girls' School	84%	235%	◀ -
3	Brisbane State High School	65%	160%	▲ NEW
3	Brisbane Grammar School	65%	160%	◀ -
3	All Hallows' School	65%	160%	▲ 1
6	St Joseph's College Gregory Terrace	64%	156%	▲ NEW
7	Anglican Church Grammar School **	62%	148%	▼ 1
8	St Margaret's Anglican Girls School **	61%	146%	▼ 3
9	Ormiston College	54%	116%	▲ NEW
9	Mt St Michael's College **	54%	116%	◀ -

This category largely follows the overall ranking, with the exception of Mt St Michael’s College joining the ranks of the Top 90 ATAR schools.

80 ATAR

Ranking #	School	% Above 80 ATAR	Outperforming State %	Changes from 2023-2024
1	Brisbane Girls Grammar School	95%	94%	▲ NEW
2	Mount Alvernia College **	94%	92%	▲ 5
2	Anglican Church Grammar School **	94%	92%	▲ 4
4	Stuartholme School **	92%	88%	▼ 2
5	All Hallows' School	87%	77%	▲ NEW
6	St Joseph's College Gregory Terrace	86%	75%	▲ NEW
7	Brisbane Grammar School	85%	73%	▲ NEW
8	St Margaret's Anglican Girls School **	84%	72%	▼ 4
9	Ipswich Girls' Grammar School	82%	67%	▲ NEW
9	Loreto College Coorparoo	82%	67%	▲ 1

As less of the “top schools” report on this category, we see a whole range of new schools such as Mount Alvernia College, Stuartholme School and St Margaret’s Anglican Girls School take to the top ranks to show that they are getting large parts of their ATAR cohort above the line!!

Cost Efficient Schools

Academics isn’t everything when it comes to a family making a call about a potential school! That’s why we’ve done the research and taken the time to make guides based off a tonne of different factors families need to weigh up into the school journey, such as cost, pricing and tuition! This year we’ve released two categories to address the cost-of-living crisis.

Top Schools by ROI

Firstly, we have calculated the top schools by ROI. In other words, which schools are giving you the most value for the tuition fees you paid. This was simply calculated by working out how many dollars ($) a parent would pay, per every outperformance percentage the school achieved.

Ranking #	School	Type	Annual Tuition ($)	Outperforming %	ROI ($ p %)
1	St John Fisher College **	Girls	4114	137.19%	$15.75
2	Mt St Michael's College **	Girls	14228	219.56%	$34.04
3	Loreto College Coorparoo	Girls	15140	222.04%	$35.82
4	Mount Alvernia College **	Girls	13580	186.30%	$38.29
5	St Rita's College **	Girls	14270	194.66%	$38.51
6	Northside Christian College	Co-Ed	11185	145.50%	$40.38
7	All Hallows' School	Girls	19625	254.71%	$40.47
8	The Lakes College	Co-Ed	14483	183.65%	$41.43
9	Ormiston College	Co-Ed	17531	215.65%	$42.7
10	Genesis Christian College	Co-Ed	10192	116.05%	$46.14
11	Saint Stephen's College	Co-Ed	12648	140.76%	$47.2
12	Ipswich Grammar School **	Boys	21660	239.51%	$47.51
13	St Aidan's Anglican Girls' School	Girls	31840	351.29%	$47.61
14	Villanova College	Boys	18017	189.61%	$49.92
15	St Joseph's College Gregory Terrace	Boys	24422	255.36%	$50.24
16	Sheldon College	Co-Ed	17688	182.75%	$50.84
17	John Paul College	Co-Ed	17165	177.31%	$50.85
18	Redlands College	Co-Ed	10590	107.83%	$51.59
19	Brisbane Girls Grammar School	Girls	34654	343.53%	$52.99
20	St John's Anglican College **	Co-Ed	18642	183.63%	$53.33

The Top ROI school this year was St John Fisher College, providing excellent value, from just $15.75 for every outperformance %. We also noticed girls schools topped this category, a trend only broken by Co-Ed school Northside Christian College at $40 for every outperformance %.

Top Schools by Cost of Living

Finally, given the current Cost of Living crisis, we’ve created a whole new category this year to help parents decide on the best school to go to!

To do this, we took the high performing ATAR schools from the Top 50 list, and factored in census data, inflation statistics, mortgage and renting cost, tuition fees, average living expenses according to the ABS, etc, all within 5km of each school.

With these factors combined, we can create a “cost of living” index (from 10 being the best, to 1 being the worst), which rank the schools to find the most cost-of-living effective colleges!

The Top Cost-of-Living school this year was Ipswich Grammar School, with an Index of 9 proving it is incredibly cost effective, followed by Ormiston College in Ormiston, and St John Fisher College in Bracken Ridge. These could be excellent options for cost-of-living efficiency!

Wondering how these schools achieved such high results? It’s likely they applied themselves all year round instead of just towards externals! Read more on why Term 2 is the most important term for success in the QCE!

Don’t see your school on here? It’s likely that your school does not publicly publish their ATAR data! Publicly submit your data if you were missed in 2024 or contact us at [email protected] to submit your results to Art of Smart Education! Note that we don’t include schools that only produce IB results to improve internal validity.

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