St Aidan’s Anglican Girls School

Educating Future-Ready Young Women with Heart, Rigor, and Vision

Academically Focused While Expertly Serving Its Students and Community One Mind at a Time

In the inner west of Brisbane, St Aidan’s Anglican Girls’ School stands as a powerful blend of tradition and forward-thinking innovation. Founded in 1929, the school carries a unique heritage that continues to shape its culture and purpose today. Unlike many of its peers, St Aidan’s was established by an order of Anglican nuns, the Society of the Sacred Advent, who were early champions of girls’ education and determined that girls should have access to the same intellectual opportunities afforded to boys.

That founding spirit still runs through the school. Principal Toni Riordan explains that from the outset, the philosophy of the Sisters centred on intellectual rigor and wholeheartedness. 

Academic seriousness and genuine care were never separate ideas; they were two sides of the same coin. Nearly a century later, St Aidan’s is widely recognised for both. The school consistently ranks among the top three schools in Queensland for academic outcomes, giving its students access to competitive university pathways in Brisbane, interstate and around the world. Yet, as proud as the community is of results and rankings, the story of St Aidan’s is ultimately one of purpose, values and a deeply human approach to educating girls.

A Campus Shaped by Challenge – and Creativity

The physical landscape of St Aidan’s is an integral part of its story. The school operates across two sites: the main campus on higher land, accommodating the primary and secondary schools, and Ambiwerra, its playing fields and sporting precinct, located lower along a creek connected to the Brisbane River. In the devastating 2011 floods, this lower land was significantly affected, and the school had to confront a difficult reality.

Rather than retreating, St Aidan’s made a bold decision. Five years ago, leadership committed to developing the Ambiwerra playing fields, not by pretending the floods would not return, but by designing for the certainty that they would. This commitment has led to one of the most distinctive master plans in Brisbane’s education sector: a suite of flood-ready facilities that embrace resilience and ingenuity.

Last year, the school opened a striking two-court indoor sports centre at Ambiwerra, a building that is both beautiful and highly functional. With its timber floors and trusses, the space feels warm and contemporary, yet it is engineered with flood behaviour in mind. Doors and louvres are designed to open and allow water to flow through. Bleachers are constructed in concrete. Services such as electrical and mechanical systems are positioned on a mezzanine level above the flood line. Even the timber floor has been designed in removable sections so that, with enough warning, it can be lifted ahead of a major flood event.

The next stage of the Ambiwerra master plan is an equally ambitious aquatic centre. The plans include an eleven-lane, fifty-metre pool capable of hosting water polo as well as swimming, a learn-to-swim pool, café facilities and change rooms. Again, the design team is working from a starting point of “when, not if” the fields flood, ensuring that plant rooms and critical infrastructure are carefully located and protected. The indigenous name Ambiwerra, meaning “girls playing near water,” has taken on a layered significance as St Aidan’s works with consultants and suppliers to create world-class facilities that are honest about their environment and built to thrive in it.

Back on the main campus, the school is preparing for another major step: a new senior centre and examination hub. St Aidan’s is awaiting ministerial infrastructure designation approval to repurpose property previously rented out and transform it into a senior learning environment that closely simulates university life.

For Toni Riordan, this project is a natural next chapter. St Aidan’s has long been focused on getting students into university, but the new facility is designed to also prepare them to flourish once they are there. The vision is to create a space for Years 11 and 12 that offers lecture-style and tutorial-style delivery, flexible learning zones, individual study spaces and room for visiting academics, artists and industry professionals. It will allow senior students to experience the rhythms and expectations of tertiary learning while still surrounded by the wraparound care of a school community.

A Local School with Deep Community Connections

Although its academic reputation and innovative master plan place St Aidan’s on the radar far beyond its immediate catchment, the school is proudly local in its feel. Located about ten kilometres from Brisbane’s CBD, it draws most of its students from within a five-kilometre radius. That neighbourhood identity informs how it engages with the wider community.

St Aidan’s is an active participant in local initiatives such as the Sherwood Street Festival, where students volunteer, perform music, and help showcase the school to families in the area. The school also plays a more serious role around disaster readiness. Riordan sits on a flood readiness committee at the Sherwood Neighbourhood Centre, and the school has worked to position itself as a support hub in times of crisis. With its elevated main campus and backup generators, St Aidan’s can offer practical assistance during disasters, from providing showers to device charging and safe gathering spaces.

Environmental stewardship is another strand of community connection. Ambiwerra sits along Oxley Creek, and the school has cultivated a long-term relationship with the Oxley Creek Catchment Association. Students work alongside the association in creek clean-ups, tree planting and conservation programs, gaining first-hand experience in caring for the local environment and understanding their role as custodians of place.

These local ties are mirrored in the school’s long-term relationships with professional partners. St Aidan’s has intentionally retained the same architects, town planners and key infrastructure consultants over the last decade as it has delivered a succession of significant capital works. That continuity has been instrumental in realising the ambitious campus master plan, and it reflects the school’s broader commitment to relationships built on trust and shared vision.

A Professional Home for Educators

For all the attention on buildings and facilities, Riordan is clear that the strength of St Aidan’s lies in its people. The school enrols around 1,100 students from Kindergarten to Year 12, with about 350 in the Junior School and 750 in the Senior School. Supporting them is a teaching staff equivalent to ninety full-time positions and approximately 130 support staff across catering, sport, administration and other roles.

St Aidan’s has earned recognition as a five-star Employer of Choice through The Educator, and it consistently attracts highly experienced teachers who are drawn to both the academic environment and the culture of the school. As a relatively small independent school, St Aidan’s offers a level of agility and flexibility that many educators value. There is room to research, pilot and refine new approaches, and innovation is not lost in bureaucracy.

However, the most frequently cited reason staff enjoy working at St Aidan’s is its sense of community. The school’s values emphasise care, connectedness and belonging. That care flows from staff to students, but just as importantly, from staff to one another. New staff often describe feeling as though they have “come home” when they join the community. Riordan recalls hearing the school described as “a massive virtual hug,” a phrase that may be informal but captures something real about the atmosphere on campus.

Professional learning is treated as central to the school’s mission. Leadership development is a key differentiator, aligning directly with St Aidan’s history as a school founded to empower girls. The school sees itself as preparing future women leaders and therefore invests heavily in leadership pathways for staff as well. From early-career teachers to middle leaders and those stepping into senior roles, there are opportunities to shadow, be mentored, present at conferences, undertake action research and act in new positions.

Much of the professional development is intentionally in-house, grounded in educational research that emphasises learning from each other’s practice. The flagship event is the annual St Aidan’s Professional Learning Summit held each January. The school dedicates significant resources to curating a high-impact day, bringing in leading thinkers from around the world. Recent keynote speakers include renowned Finnish educator Dr Pasi Sahlberg, and plans are underway for Dr Simon Breakspear to headline an upcoming summit. These events, Riordan believes, are not just inspirational; they directly shape classroom practice, which in turn shapes student experience.

Future World Ready: Growth, Innovation and the Road to 2029

Over the past decade, St Aidan’s has experienced a ninety percent growth in enrolments, recovering from the twin impacts of the Global Financial Crisis and the 2011 floods, which affected many families’ homes and businesses. The school’s strong performance in digital learning during the COVID-19 period further reinforced its reputation, showcasing its ability to pivot quickly and deliver high-quality hybrid education.

Looking ahead, Riordan sees continued opportunity for growth in enrolments, driven by both the school’s capacity and Brisbane’s broader population increase through interstate and international migration. But the most exciting opportunities lie in reimagining education itself.

St Aidan’s is acutely aware that the traditional model of education, shaped by the industrial era, is giving way to new paradigms. The notion of fixed hours, fixed rooms and fixed rows of desks is being challenged by emerging technologies, including AI, by new understandings of how young people learn, and by changes in the world of work. 

Riordan speaks with enthusiasm about rethinking the use of time and place: exploring more flexible timetables, varied learning spaces, different modes of course delivery and a richer mix of experiences across the year. For a school with a strong research-informed culture, these possibilities are less a disruption than an invitation.

All of this thinking is being brought together in the school’s new strategic direction, a four-year plan that will carry St Aidan’s to its centenary year in 2029. The strategy is built around five key pillars and ten “big ideas,” all anchored in the overarching vision of becoming truly “future world ready.” 

As the plan is finalised, the school is engaging in broad community consultation and testing those ideas with stakeholders. In parallel, preparations are already underway for a year-long centenary celebration that will honour students, staff, current and past parents, alumni and the wider community.

Riordan, who has been principal for eight years after joining St Aidan’s as deputy principal in 2015, is clear about the through-line that connects the school’s past, present and future. In a world where equality is still a work in progress, she believes St Aidan’s has an enduring responsibility to educate girls who are confident, creative, connected and courageous.

“We know we don’t yet live in an equal world,” she reflects. “But we can empower our girls to go out and make a difference. They will solve problems, they will lead, and they will leave their mark on the wider world.”

At St Aidan’s Anglican Girls’ School, that mission is not an abstract ideal; it is visible in every lecture hall blueprint, every flood-resilient facility, every professional learning summit, every community partnership and every classroom interaction. As the school approaches its centenary, one thing is clear: the vision that compelled a small group of Anglican sisters in 1929 is alive and evolving, preparing the next generation of young women to shape the future with intellect, empathy and purpose.

AT A GLANCE

Who: St Aidan’s Anglican Girls School

What: A welcoming school that puts community and student success first

Where: Corinda, QLD, Australia

Website: www.staidans.qld.edu.au

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