tags

I am looking at renting in the Brisbane city area, but do not know anything about the schools in each suburb, other than from their website. If anyone has any information on any of the state primary schools in these areas (good and bad), I would really appreciate it!

Areas I am looking at:

Auchenflower
Milton
Paddington
Red Hill
Kelvin Grove
Fortitude Valley
New Farm
Newstead
Windsor
Albion
Ascot

However I am considering moving further out to these suburbs below if I can't get a good rental in the city.

Ashgrove
Bardon
The Gap
Toowong
Taringa
Indooroopilly
Chapel Hill
Kenmore

I have a budget of $1,000/week for a 3+ bed property, so it depends on what I can get in the areas for that money!

Thanks for your help!

PunkDebutante

Milton State School has a wonderful reputation I have been told. Also, a suburb not on your list with a fantastic state school is Fig Tree Pocket. I live in Toowong and the state school here is very good as well.

bingobob777

I have attached the spreadsheet I knocked up when looking at suburbs 10 month ago, it may be some help. Figures shown are year 3 NAPLAN results, travel times are from Translink website to the top end of Fortitude Valley.

Red I ruled out for either cost or travel time to CBD, orange was possibility and green were favourites, as it was availability of decent 4 bed houses with pools was a bigger driver of location than the schools.

$1000 a week gives you plenty of flexibility for a 3 bed, even a 4 bed without a pool and you could pretty much pick where you wanted.

My view on suburbs

If you have kids rule out Fortitude Valley and Newstead.

Milton, New Farm, Ascot and Paddington are all close to the CBD and have plenty of facilities within walking distance, if you like being in the thick of things with access to cafes, bars, restaurants then move to one of them, also consider Bulimba. If a house had been available I would have picked one of them (2 kids aged 5 and 2)

Ashgrove, Bardon and The Gap are really nice suburbs with good schools, but speaking as as someone who now lives in The Gap, I find the size of them a pain, nipping out for a beer or breakfast just isn't an option in most locations.

Auchenflower, Toowong, Taringa and Indooropilly all have good access to the CBD via Train, don't know much about them other than Indooropilly has a reasonable shopping centre.

Chapel Hill and Kenmore would be a no for me as I pass a queue several Kilometres long every morning heading for the roundabout at Toowong Cemetary, the tunnel will be open in a few years though.

Windsor and Albion I don't fancy having driven through them, although they are close to City and Kelvingrove I've never been in.

Pollyana

Some parts of Windsor, up around Constitution Hill for instance, are really nice, peaceful areas. Good buses and trains and while I don't have kids, locals say that Windsor State School has a very good reputation

DadAgain

I'd be looking not so much at primary school reputation, but also hgih school reputation.

If you position yourself right you could find yourself living in West End and your kids get a free-pass to Brisbane State High School saving you potentially a quarter of a million $ (for 2 kids) versus the cost of similar performing private schools. (Brisbane State High is only beaten by 3 or 4 priuvate schools in terms of 'league table' performance - and although they have selected entry based on Academic merit, Musical ability or Sporting prowess - they do also let in locals without any further requirements).

Of course not everyone wants to live in West End, and not everyone can afford to live in a decent place in West End - but its an option. Other decent public high schools include Kenmore (which gives you a bitch of a commute to the CBD), The Gap or Indooroopilly.

For my money I reckon Indooroopilly has a fantastic balance of facilities and local colour (Even BingoBob would find it busy enough), is a very easy train ride to CBD, but also is far enough away from the city to have quiet spots.


(For the record - we live in The Gap, absolutely love the area and think TGSS is a great school for our kids)

macy

Agree, Windsor is lovely, my kids go to Wilston State School which some parts of Windsor are catchment for. Wilston is a great area, close to the CBD and lots of families, expensive area though to buy.

tags

Thanks for the great info!

The reason why I am concentrating on inner-city areas is the commute time to work.

What would the train/bus commute time be from the western suburbs, say Indooroopilly to Coronation Drive in the mornings? How long would it take to cycle? I noticed a lot of hills....

bingobob777

I think the TGSS is a great school for my kids as well, and the wheelbarrow of food we won in the raffle at the community day a few weeks back went down a treat!

DadAgain

I'pilly to Coro drive? 5minutes on train station-station (I'pilly-Milton). Depending on where you live and work you might add 5 minutes walk either side of that - but if you live the 'wrong' end of I'pilly there'll be a bus service that'd be quicker.

If you're further out than Indooroopilly however, the commute gets nasty, Kenmore is not much further away (5 minutes off-peak) but the traffic on Moggil road is seriously bad - I'd expect at least a 45 minute bus ride from Kenmore to Coro drive at 7am peak.

I dont know about cycling - but lots of people do it. The 3 km or so from Indro to Toowoong might be ugly in terms of hills - but then you'd be alongside the river on the cycle path.

PunkDebutante

My husband's full commute from Taringa to the CBD is 9 minutes so Indooroopilly to Milton would be about 5-6 minutes. Where we live we are 3 minutes to either Taringa or Indooroopilly train stations.

fish.01

We had very similar criteria to you when looking for a home so our situation may help you. We were living next to Rosalie Village in Paddington but chose Ashgrove for the following reasons:

- Local shopping village is very practical for family living. We have Aldi, Coles and Woolworths supermarkets within a few minutes walk. And 7/11 and IGA for after hours. It also has 5 banks branches, newsagents, gyms, tax agents, pet stores, gift shops, multiple chemists, takeaways, restaurants, lots of GP surgeries, book shop, deli, fruit and veg shop, bakeries etc etc

- It has multiple good quality govt catchment schools a few minutes walk away. Has non govt schools as well.

- Multiple good to excellent child care facilities in the area.

- Two creeks run through the suburb so there are lots of lovely parks and walking/bike tracks.

- Lovely character queenslander houses. I love looking at, and living in them, so it was important to me. Also some local history, historic homes/buildings and community groups.

- We like to eat out sometimes for a weekend breakfast and we have 9 cafes spread around the Ashgrove shopping village within a few minutes walk or more a few minutes drive away. We can also have a 25min morning constitutional weekend walk up to the multitude of cafes/antiques/shops of Latrobe Tce in Paddington, or drive in a couple of minutes.

- Many bus routes pass through Ashgrove shops to the point you never need to check a timetable. 15-25 minutes to the cbd on the bus and hardly any waiting if you live near the main rd. Easy peak hour drive to the cbd and off peak is only about 7 minutes (4.5km) - can even take backstreets right to the edge of the city from our house if you need to.

- I cycle to work in Fortitude Valley. I have flat bike paths through parks along the creek most of the way there.

Of course some of the walkability of these things is because we decided to buy in a housing pocket near the shops. There are a few different pockets where you could achieve a similar outcome.


I also think Toowong/Taringa/Indooroopilly area is a good choice as long as you live somewhere with a reasonably flat route out to the bicentennial bikeway along the river.

Wilston along Kedron Brook Rd is worth checking out.

tags

Which would be the best state primary schools in the areas of: Ashgrove, Bardon, Red Hill, Kelvin Grove, Paddington, Milton, Auchenflower, Rosalie?

As you can see, I am looking at the areas near Coronation Drive, so that a cycle commute is possible.

If I was to move a bit further out towards Toowong, Taringa and Indooroopilly, I believe Ironside State School and Indooroopilly State Schools are highly regarded. But of course it depends on the catchment areas!

fish.01

Hard to say really. You could rank them by NAPLAN results from the www.myschool.edu.au website which I think bingo bob has done (at least some of them) for you but often depends on the demographic going into the school. They are all in high socio economic areas but some of them are particularly high so it makes sense that the children would have every advantage to get high results - in other words does it have great teachers or is it because of the background of the kids. For example rainworth state school (bardon) has its socio economic breakdown of students as follows:

Bottom quarter = 0%
Middle low quarter = 4%
Middle high quarter = 14%
Top quarter = 82%

No surprise that it usually gets great results. The more impressive thing is that the school has a good name as an all round environment rather than just results.

I think all the state primary schools in Paddington, Red Hill, Bardon, Ashgrove etc would be worth considering as I don't know one with a bad reputation (anybody?) so maybe the feel of the school/staff/principal should be your final determinant.

As well as coronation drive, you can commute along latrobe tce and along ithaca/enoggera creeks (as I do). Note that you would not commute from latrobe tce paddington to coronation drive cycleway as there are massive hills. You would use latrobe tce itself which has a nice gradual slope into the cbd.

If you are near the train it is a very handy location. Ironside always seemed interesting as the children of visiting overseas university of queensland faculty apparently often attend the school to give it an international flavour.

tags

Thanks for the great info!

It's hard to get the right place that ticks all the boxes when you have a budget!

Cycle to work; Good state school, parks, shops and cafes/restaurants within walking distance; 3+ bed house with a decent sized garden.

That's all, I'm not asking for much!

fish.01

For a bit of fun, and in case it helps of course , I did some real estate hunting to see what you get for $1000 a week as I have never had that budget. It is quite hard to spend.

Ashgrove (5km) $1100/week (5 bed house, pool): http://www.realestate.com.au/propert...rove-405214631

Paddington (2km) $950/week (5 bed house): http://www.realestate.com.au/propert...gton-405722631

Ashgrove (5km) $900/week (5 bed house, pool): http://www.realestate.com.au/propert...rove-405538651

Toowong (5km) $850/week (5 bed house, pool): http://www.realestate.com.au/propert...wong-405674491

Auchenflower (3km) $800/week (4 bed house): http://www.realestate.com.au/propert...ower-405388376

Auchenflower (3km) $800/week (5 bed house): http://www.realestate.com.au/propert...ower-403854623

Auchenflower (3km) $800/week (3 bed apt, pool): http://www.realestate.com.au/propert...ower-404964058

Indooroopilly (7km) $680/week (3 bed apt): http://www.realestate.com.au/propert...illy-402841913

Indooroopilly (7km) $670/week (4 bed house): http://www.realestate.com.au/propert...illy-405442016

Paddington (2km) $530/week (3 bed townhouse): http://www.realestate.com.au/propert...gton-405668711

Ashgrove (5km) $465/week (3 bed house): http://www.realestate.com.au/propert...rove-405495441