The Anglican Church has been involved in schooling in NSW for over 200 years, the two longest standing schools being The King’s School (1831) and St Catherine’s (1856).
At the time of the introduction of “free, compulsory and secular” public schooling in 1880, the Diocese had 69 parish schools. These schools were closed and Anglican children were transferred to the newly formed public schools. Subsequently, new schools were set up directly by the Church or by individuals who later sold them to the Church.
It is only since World War II that the Diocese has actively established new schools; in 2006 there are 38 Anglican Schools employing well over 2,500 teachers and educating more than 30,000 students.
Following the passage of the 1880 Public Instruction Act, the Church became actively involved in providing Special Religious Instruction (now Special Religious Education) in public schools. The delivery of this program has relied on volunteers who have been trained and equipped with suitable Bible-based curricula. There are now over 2,500 SRE teachers who teach approximately 160,000 primary children and a lesser number of secondary students.
The Diocesan Board of Education was set up in 1919 to train and support SRE teachers. This work continued until the Board’s amalgamation in 1997 with the Youth Department to form the Anglican Youth and Education Division (Anglican Youthworks).
The Diocesan Education Commission began in 1977, as a specialist advocacy and representation unit within the Board, to respond to changes in public policy and administration as they affected both Government and non-Government schooling. In 2004, the recruitment of Christians into teaching began as a new initiative of the Commission with the support of the Sydney Anglican Schools Corporation. In 2005, Shore School took the initiative in examining the feasibility of Anglican teacher education. An outcome of this has been the Anglican Teacher Education program, which now forms part of the activities of the Commission, and which is supported by 33 of the Anglican schools within the Diocese.
As from the beginning of 2007 the Anglican Education Commission has been constituted under its own Ordinance, to look after advocacy and representation, teacher recruitment and teacher education.
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