Why students at this school will get a head start at uni

A RAPID pathway to post-school studies will be opened up to Cairns High students under a $35 million plan to create Queensland's first comprehensive university school.

CQUniversity and Cairns State High School will today announce the ambitious plan, which will include new infrastructure and a specialist curriculum for the CBD high school.

Cairns SHS principal Christopher Zilm said his school's transformation would include major educational infrastructure, such as new laboratories, to be built at the school site.

"We are looking to build state-of-the-art facilities that enable us to deliver new and improved curriculum in emerging areas such as allied health, trades, engineering, and aerospace and arts technologies," he said.

The proposal includes a teacher education centre of excellence, which could be used by other schools in the region to lift their capacity to train and retain high-quality teachers, he said.

CQUniversity teaching and support staff would also have a permanent presence at the school under the plan.

CQUniversity Far North associate vice-chancellor Jodie Duignan-George said a university school would ready students for the unprecedented change and challenges that awaited them in the economies and workforces of the future.

"Everything we would deliver under this concept will have a seamless pathway to post-schooling qualifications, with clear incentive and support mechanisms in place to continue into dual sector university participation after Year 12," she said.

The two organisations would now work together to attract the money needed to support the project, she said.

"While we work together to attract this funding we have made a start on planning activities around what the curriculum would look like and the resources required."

Ms Duignan-George said it would take about two years from the time the project was funded to build the required infrastructure at the school site and fully embed the new curriculum.