On the shoulders of giants!

 

 

 

 

This new, lay-led model of school governance will be responsible for educating 40,000 students.

 

It is estimated that 20 per cent - or one in five boys - in Catholic secondary schools around Australia attend an Edmund Rice school.

 

Although EREA came into existence on October 1, 2007, at the same time as the newly formed Oceania Province, the national launch was held in Melbourne on February 1 and 2, 2008, gathering together student leaders (some of whom are pictured left and right), Principals, Board chairs, the EREA Council, Board and Coordinators.

 

Over the next three weeks another four launches were held, one in each EREA Region which corresponds geographically to the former Australian Provinces. Later, schools also celebrated.

 

Each celebration had a three-fold focus of honouring a rich past, sharing the present proudly and looking enthusiastically to the future.

 

Christian Brothers have ministered in Catholic schools across Australia for well over a century.

 

By 1900, the Brothers were conducting 29 schools in the colonies of Australia and New Zealand, rising to 150 schools throughout Australasia and Papua New Guinea by 1974. The Brothers owned and operated some 50 of these schools and worked in partnership with other Church authorities in the others.

 

Over recent years, the Christian Brothers' leadership in Australia sponsored a project to examine future models of governance for their schools. The sharing of responsibilities in many of the Brothers' Australian schools had evolved, especially since the 1980s, through the appointment of lay principals and the devolution of appropriate authority to School Boards.

 

However, Edmund Rice Education Australia - the formation of which was announced in July 2006 - takes this much further as EREA and not the Congregation will govern what have been called "Catholic schools in the Edmund Rice tradition"; now almost 40 in number.

 

Dr Wayne Tinsey is EREA's Executive Director.  He is an experienced educator having worked in Catholic education in New South Wales, Queensland, and Western Australia for more than 25 years.  He also has worked with the Christian Brothers in Australia, South America and India and has broad experience of the Edmund Rice charism in education. (Dr Tinsey is pictured, left of the picture, with the Oceania Province Leader, Br Vince Duggan CFC)

 

The organisation's character, quality and viability have been placed in the hands of the Directors of Identity, Education Services and Corporate Services, Robert White, Peter Leuenberger and Geoffrey Doyle, respectively.  The EREA structure also has a Council and a Board.

 

Dr Tinsey, speaking at the national launch, said that Edmund Rice Education Australia would do its part in creating the "new story"  the Congregational Leader of the Christian Brothers, Br Philip Pinto, had asked of the Brothers in Brisbane, in January, 2008.

 

"As great as the past may have been, we have an obligation to forge an even better future," he said.  "Over reliance on 'tradition' can see the perpetuation old patterns of the past without questioning their relevance. This is 'traditionalism' and it stifles the prophetic.

 

"Br Philip Pinto ... said: 'We need a new story. The old is exhausted and exhausting'.

 

"The Brothers have entrusted a significant part of their story to Edmund Rice Education Australia. We must do our part in the creation of the 'new story'."

 

Dr Tinsey, in acknowledging the dedication and commitment of the Christian Brothers to education in Australia and the charism of Blessed Edmund Rice, said that EREA stood "on the shoulders of giants".

 

"Edmund Rice would surely be pleased at the bravery and trust you have shown in the future by establishing Edmund Rice Education Australia, a new expression of this charism."

 

In calling for Edmund Rice schools to be places of evangelisation, "places where the priorities of the Christian Gospel are brought to bear on every facet of life",  he said they must resist in a society that increasingly sees education as a commodity which can be bought and resist having the schools used as vehicles for socio-differentiation and creeping elitism.

 

"Edmund Rice Education in this land can model a family of schools where those who can look after those who can't; where co-responsibility becomes the norm; where the strong accept responsibility for those on the margins."

 

The formation of Edmund Rice Education Australia is part of a massive restructuring of the Christian Brothers' Congregation in Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and East Timor. In this change, the four provinces in Australia - St Patrick's (Vic/Tas), St Francis Xavier (Qld), Holy Spirit (WA/SA) and St Mary's (NSW) - New Zealand's St Joseph Province, and the Edmund Rice Region of Papua New Guinea and East Timor, became the one Oceania Province under a leadership team of seven full-time members based in Brisbane.  The Province Leader is Br Vince Duggan CFC.