The national online site for Education news, The Educator, recently carried coverage of the St Philips Teaching School. The Executive Principal of the St Philips group, Graeme Irwin, noted:
“I believe that the Teaching School is a way forward for teacher education in this country,” Irwin said. "The immediate on-the-job application of the learnt theory is extremely beneficial for producing successful teachers, but beyond this, we are educating teachers in a tertiary setting which is Christ-focused, and this is ground-breaking.”

To read the piece in full, click here.

While most look to the AC Hub School-Tertiary relationship for its revolutionary contributions to initial teacher education, it also has other strengths. In 2018, the St Philips group of schools introduced the Cert III Ministry onto its Waratah campus, as an alternative to traditional approaches to Studies of Religion in Year 11. The results have been profound in that most important of indices -- impact on the lives of students.  We include here the first of series of self-reflections by students learning under Kieran Bridger. Obviously, we cannot identify students by name, but one student (let's call him Jesse) reflected on the year of ministry training like this:

Jesse: The first thing that comes to mind that I’ve learnt in this course is the difficulty of leadership. The dedication and responsibility that it takes to be a leader is not for everyone, but the responsibility is a blessing. Being chosen by God as a model that someone should work to be like is a reward in and of itself. This course has helped me to understand what it means to be a leader and shown me that there is no such thing as a 'text-book' leader: each leader has their own unique form of it. Through the year, I learnt about my style of leadership. It is unique and difficult to explain but I think I’m the type of leader that gets behind someone and pushes them further than I can go myself. I help them to become strong enough to not need my leadership anymore once they become a strong leader in their own way. I believe my leadership strengths are delegation and exhortation. However, I struggle when a task is not people focussed, as I am a people-person.