We haven’t landed on a high school yet. That’s still a few years away. But so many people have told us how lucky we were to find such a good primary school, and honestly, it wasn’t luck. It took a fair few wrong turns to get there, and I have a feeling secondary school is going to be its own version of the same scramble.
What I can talk about properly is Prep, it’s all still fresh enough to write down properly. When we were applying, I had no idea what any of it involved, and I remember wishing someone with actual experience had just laid it out for me. So here’s that post — partly how the Queensland system fits together, partly what our own application looked like, step by step.
How the Queensland school system is structured
Before Prep, there’s early childhood education, which covers daycare and kindergarten. Daycare (sometimes called childcare) generally takes babies and toddlers from birth to around five. Kindy is the bit that trips a lot of parents up, because it isn’t a separate school you enrol in — it’s a structured program, usually starting around age four, and in our case it ran inside the same daycare centre our daughter was already attending. We didn’t have to move her anywhere for it.
When to apply Prep
Timing turned out to matter more than I expected. Public schools don’t all open Prep applications on the same date, but most state schools start taking them sometime in February or March of the year before your child starts, so if you’re aiming for 2027, expect applications to open around early-to-mid 2026. It’s worth checking your specific school’s website directly rather than going off a friend’s timeline, since it does shift school to school. The bit that caught me off guard is that public schools work through catchment students first. If you’re applying to a public school outside your own catchment, get your application in as early as you can, because places for out-of-catchment kids depend on whatever’s left once local enrolments are sorted. Private schools run on a completely different clock — some ask families to register years ahead just to hold a spot, so if that’s part of your plan, it’s worth starting that conversation well before you’d even think to for a public school.
The public/private split matters here too. Public schools work purely on catchment — as long as you can prove you live in the zone, and popular schools do have cut-offs on how recent that proof needs to be, a place is reserved for you. Private schools don’t work off an address at all. They allocate places on a mix of when you applied and how the interview goes, which is a completely different game. For the genuinely sought-after ones, families are often submitting applications two to three years out, and for a handful of the most competitive schools, some parents put their child’s name down the day they’re born. We went through this ourselves last year — we ended up choosing a public school in the end, but we’d put in a private school application alongside it, just to keep the option open, and the timelines really didn’t line up with each other at all.
Prep age cut-off and year levels
Primary school proper starts with Prep, and Prep is where most of the confusion sits. In Queensland, a child is eligible if they’ll turn five by 30 June of the year they start — I checked this against Queensland’s own enrolment pages, and it’s genuinely worth confirming yourself if your child’s birthday falls anywhere near that date, because it decides which year they actually start. After Prep, the year levels go the way you’d expect: six for Year 1, then seven, eight, nine, ten and eleven through Years 2 to 6, with Year 6 being the last year of primary school here.
How to apply for Prep
Once we’d settled on a school, applying was fairly simple, even if some of the paperwork wasn’t. We started on the school’s own website, under the Enrolment or Enrolments section, which is where each school lists its own intake requirements and dates. Worth actually reading, rather than assuming it’ll match whatever a friend’s school asked for, because it doesn’t always.
From there it was mostly about pulling documents together — an enrolment form, our daughter’s birth certificate, if you’re not citizens or permanent residents, your visa paperwork on top of that. Proof of address was needed too, a lease agreement and a utility bill in our case. We submitted everything online in the end, though some schools will let you take paperwork in and hand it over at the office if that’s easier. The school got back to us the same afternoon, which honestly surprised me after how much we’d had to gather beforehand.
Documents, catchment proof and consent forms
A few things caught us off guard along the way. The birth certificate needed to be sighted in person — we had to go into the school so they could check the original, not just a photo of it. Proof of address mattered more than I’d assumed as well. Queensland schools work on catchment areas, and they want real evidence you live where you say you live. If you’re renting, or living with parents and the place isn’t in your name, whoever does hold the lease or the title may need to sign a statutory declaration in front of a Justice of the Peace — that was an extra errand we hadn’t planned on. There was also a stack of consent forms to get through, things like whether you’re okay with the school putting your child’s name or photo on its website or social media. Nothing difficult, just more of it than you’d think going in. And for anyone in Brisbane specifically, a lot of the public schools have catchment restrictions, so your address genuinely decides which school you’re entitled to enrol in — worth checking on Queensland’s EdMap tool before you get attached to somewhere.
Was it hard, in the end?
Looking back, none of it was really hard. The application itself is simple enough. It’s the proof-of-address and document-checking side that trips people up, mostly because you don’t know in advance exactly what you’ll be asked for. If I were doing it again, I’d get the birth certificate, the address proof, and the statutory declaration sorted before starting the online form, rather than scrambling to chase paperwork once the school’s already reviewing everything.
For more information about prep age eligibility and the 30 June cut-off – please check Queensland Government’s own enrolment age page and Education Queensland’s “About Prep” page.
Catchment area and proof-of-residency requirements, including the statutory declaration process, please check Queensland’s school catchment area page and Education Queensland’s School Enrolment Management Plans documentation.