Report Highlights High Salaries for Brisbane Private School Staff

One of Brisbane’s most prestigious schools has inked a new pay deal for teachers, as Queensland’s private institutions set the state standard for teachers’ wages.

Among the first Brisbane private schools to negotiate new deals was Brisbane Grammar School, which sent a new agreement to the Fair Work Commission for final approvals in mid-September.

It would pay senior teaching staff as much as $140,000 by January next year, which Independent Education Union Queensland branch secretary Terry Burke said would match Brisbane Girls Grammar School salaries.

“They saw the school over the other side of the lane, getting particular rates and thought that as a staff they should be getting paid those rates too,” Burke said.

Brisbane Girls Grammar School paid its most experienced general teaching staff a base rate of $135,206 this year.

In its 2025 annual report, the school recorded almost $50 million in employee expenses for 338 staff, including part-time and casual workers.

At Brisbane Grammar, employee expenses reached over $53 million.

The school’s most experienced teachers were earning a base salary of about $133,400 by midyear, following a 3 per cent interim increase during negotiations.

The school declined to comment when contacted by this masthead.

The latest Commonwealth data from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency showed the average wage for all staff across almost 40 eligible Brisbane private secondary schools sat at about $117,000 in the 2024-25 financial year.

This number, which included non-teaching staff, increased from the previous year by about $4000 across all Brisbane private schools.

Among the schools with the highest averages on its list was Anglican Church Grammar School (Churchie), which paid teaching and non-teaching staff an average of $149,000 across the 2024-25 financial year.

However, in 2026, the highest base salary for a teacher sat at $130,996, although teachers with additional qualifications, such as highly accomplished and lead teachers, could add another $16,000.

Burke said across private institutions, independent-sector schools had an “energetic promotion” of staff to specialised roles, such as highly accomplished and lead teacher roles, which come with a several-thousand-dollar bonus.

Catholic schools, he said, were generally employing more graduate teachers, driving down salary average figures.

“Even more so, the pattern of doing internships in the last year of the four-year degree – that continues to rise,” Burke said.

At the lower end of the figures, Brisbane Adventist College and Brisbane Boys’ College (BBC) paid staff, on average, less than $100,000.

However, BBC’s current wage deal stipulated the school would pay its non-specialised teachers a base salary of up to $131,000 this year.

Burke said the state’s public sector generally set the precedent for teachers’ pay, and private schools were “the next cab off the ranks”.

“The last little while we’ve been so-so, but the big increases should have occurred in July last year for the Queensland Teachers’ Union,” he said.

The union was instead fronting arbitration in April next year, leaving the private sector to eke out its own pay deals ahead of public school teachers, Burke said.

The Education Department told this masthead the current average for state school teachers – falling in the 2026-27 financial year – was about $117,000.

A spokesperson said the September interim wage order bumped teachers up to base salaries between $86,600 and about $126,700.

The department also offered “valuable initiates” to teachers, the spokesperson said, including incentive programs, relocation packages, and retention payments.

The Catholic sector was next to negotiate fresh pay deals.

These included six agreements with Queensland’s five dioceses, and one covering religious institute schools – a group which includes St Joseph’s College Gregory Terrace (Terrace), Marist College Ashgrove and All Hallows’ School.

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