By Dr Tim McDonald
Executive Direction, Catholic Education Western Australia
Catholic Education Western Australia is a remarkable system of schools.
From its early beginnings in the 1840s, our system has grown into a vibrant network of Catholic learning communities.
Seventy-seven thousand students and 10,000 staff now have the opportunity to learn, teach and flourish in 163 schools and colleges spanning Western Australia’s four dioceses – from Kununnurra in the far-north Kimberley region to Esperance in the south.
Over the years, dedicated religious and lay staff have established schools to cater for the full diversity of our state, from schools providing the only formal education in remote communities, to large colleges across the major centres in our state.
In the past four years, we have built six new schools and one new campus to cater for the growing demand for Catholic education. Designed for a new age of education, these schools are future-focused learning spaces that activate collaboration, problem solving and critical thinking in an energised, inclusive format. Securing funding and expertise to support capital development in new schools is always going to be difficult. It is, however, vital to the mission of Catholic Education that faith-based learning is on offer for emerging communities in high-growth regions; and it is a challenge that our staff and system leaders handle with agility, resourcefulness and passion.
A far greater challenge for Catholic Education is how we re-imagine learning and development in an increasingly interconnected and complex world at a time when the rate and scale of change is so accelerated. How do we enable our students to flourish and how do we invest in our teachers to make extraordinary learning possible and demonstrable in every classroom?
If communities are to thrive in the 21st century, we must learn how to reinvent the very foundation of society – our schools. As educators, our expertise and experience have immense value and our competence in this century will be driven by our capacity to face the world and its challenges successfully. This new world is vastly different from the one many of us faced as students ourselves. But our needs and our purpose as human beings has remained unchanged. As the new world beckons, we must design an education system that provides capacity for problem solving, an agile disposition and an ability to live with uncertainty and complexity, managing the demands of a digital lifestyle with adroitness and optimism. We must seek new ways to reach our potential – as learners, teachers, school communities and as a society.
Our schools need to be places where every student and staff member has a sense of belonging, where everyone learns they have a talent. To flourish as schools, learners and teachers alike need to realise that their lives have great purpose and that they have the power to act responsibly and be generous to give back.
Our teachers will flourish when they develop as Catholic teachers, when they see the profound impact they have on their students and thus express the ageless heart of our profession; when they have the capacity to weave the values of our faith in the everyday and can witness to their faith.
For parents to flourish in society, they need to be acknowledged as primary educators, supported by technologies that connect them in real time to their children’s learning. As an education system, we need to build capacity for parents to guide their children in faith and support them as they nurture their children to generously contribute as moral and ethical members of society.
Our purpose for all educators is, of course, our students. In an education system with students at its heart, children will flourish when they can work as curious learners with the capacity to problem solve, collaborate and connect with others, when they are seen as independent self-starters who are resilient to change. As they grow as faith-filled people, experiencing Christ in their lives and in the lives of others, they will learn tolerance and the welcoming of diversity, and will be challenged to be moral and ethical people. They will flourish when they reach their potential and are supported to be the best citizens possible.
Designing schools for the 21st century is a process that begins with questions. It is about rekindling curiosity to discover new educational opportunities and ways of learning. But, as we continue on our 2,000-year-old journey that is Catholic Education, let us not forget that our needs and desires, and the very nature of human flourishing, remains eternal.
Let us be enlivened by the Pope in his encyclical, Evangeliuum Gaudium – The Joy of the Gospel, that we are people of abundance and are called to be missionary disciples, bringing the Good News to life in our students and the communities we serve. To work in Catholic Education Western Australia is a privilege and we have a wonderful master teacher in Jesus who modelled for us how to love, serve and heal – the very work Catholic educators do in our schools each day.
From page 14 and 15 from Issue 3: ‘Education: Teaching, Learning and Technology in 2016’ of The Record Magazine