Fortitude Valley State Secondary College

Such an impressive building and state of the art amenities.
First grade 12 cohort of 2025 has ATAR score of 21% > 90 is below the overall QLD state average of 25% and way below Brisbane schools in general let it be public or private.
The school hasn’t published their medium ATAR however their overall score of 53% above 80 and 70% above 70 suggest a way below average ATAR score. Mediocre results being published as “incredibly proud to share” on school social media.
The lack of focus on school work, the I pads, no homework, unmotivated teachers, no parent-teacher interviews, no focus on excellence or sport…
Language options - a complete fraud as school offering languages such as French/ Spanish / German without having teachers speaking these languages. So only language teacher who was Chinese ended up teaching French and German… Kids ended up being on a language app for at least one hour per week..
HPE teacher “teaching math”
No continuity in language as school change the language offerings / goal post every year (definitely changed every year for past 5 years)
Smoking mirrors and fake news.
Bullying culture not being addressed Multiple girls being violently assaulted multiple times, threatened to be killed with a complete lack of care from the school although reported by parents multiple times, school more concern about not raising any red flags in their annual school report than dealing with matter at hand. Girls being licked in class, boys feast fighting being ignored.
Disrespectful behaviour with students and teachers alike shouting and swearing whilst out in excursion. (Occurred with grade 8 and 9 at least so more than once)
A teacher being cat fish with fake tinder account created by some students with photo of teacher in her underwear being shared across the school… the school never solved it / never find the culprit and never addressed it or at least never took the opportunity to use as a lesson for the kids. Once again, it was burried.
Only reasons parents know all those smoking mirrors is through a community / FVSSC support What’s app group parents have created.
Teachers scrolling their phones whilst in class with students playing on their I pads as daily occurrence.
Voting with their feet, many families make the tough decision to move their kids into another school within a couple of years. And many catchment kids don’t even set foot in it.
A new principal is starting this year 2026 - a lot of hope for families for this new principle to turn it around

this school has their priorities on the wrong thing and it's absurd.

for a little context, i'm a closeted ftm trans. my parents were (and still are) extremely homophobic/transphobic.

they're aware of the transphobic (and mentally/psychologically abusive) nature of my parents. only because of my psychologist's advice on not letting my parents know, did they keep quiet about it.

i had wanted to express myself and be known by my preferred name around school for a while but had concerns for my parents finding out, and while at first my teachers did just that, eventually they were instructed to return back to my legal name. i didn't complain, though i was told it was due to the fact i might get accidentally outed to my parents, which i understood.

long story short, the guidence officer said they thought i was in danger (for a reason that i will not disclose but was an issue outside of school). a while later, my dad complained that i was getting bullied so my head of house came to talk to me with the guidence officer, and they had to talk to my parents about my behaviour because according to them, it was my fault i was being treated unfairly and i wasn't actually getting 'bullied'.

on top of this, they mentioned that my transgender identity would have to be brought up to them, which they knew my parents weren't aware of. i immediately burst into tears, begging them not to tell them, however they were very fixed on this decision.

i later spoke to my favourite (gender queer) member of staff (which just so happened to be my ESO for the day) and they offered to yell at the guidence officer about it and risk their job to protect me and my safety because under law, they're not supposed to do things that would put me in greater risk of harm and they CANNOT do things without my consent.

i will be changing schools shortly, but that ESO will forever have a place in my heart as a supportive (almost paternal/father) figure.

the school believes in being different from other schools because it wants to be “the best school in the universe”, however it doesn’t need to. There is nothing wrong with doing the same as other schools because if it work for them it can also work for us. the school also doesn’t want to have old stuff (i don’t know how else to word it) because they want to be new since they are the first vertical school in the city area yet the uniform was inspired by the uniform of english solider during one of the great wars, and if that was not the inspiration, it still has a very old design look to it. the “rules” they have on clothing, hair and accessories also feels very traditional and old, i expected a school wanting to be new would have a more open dress code policy to allow for more expression from students but it severely lacks that as you can get in trouble for having an hair tie on your wrist or your tie down. although the school is weird, the teachers are amazing, like
there are genuinely amazing teachers and the student community is good too.