The Anglican Education Commission (AEC) is significantly ramping up its support services to all Christian teachers, not only those in Anglican schools, via an internet network and professional development courses.
Ian Keast is director of teacher recruitment for the AEC, whose work is known publicly under the brand "The Christians in Teaching Project'. He says the lack of support offered Christians in the State education system is the "main concern' raised by trainee teachers.
"As I have been meeting with trainee teachers in their Christian university groups, it has been the chief concern amongst those wanting to enter the State system," he says. "They've been asking me, "Where will I get Christian support?'... Some public school staffrooms can be quite hostile to Christianity."
The AEC recently formed a small group made up of highly regarded public school principal Ian Wing, executive director of the AEC Dr Bryan Cowling and Ian Keast to address the needs of Christian teachers in the State system.
The first project launched by this group will be a new e-network to support teachers in the workplaces via the internet. The website is now in the development phase, with hopes it will go live in October.
"While the idea grew out of our concern to support public school teachers, the concept is to promote a ready means of support for all teachers," says Mr Keast. "It will be open to all, although its big appeal will be to those in our State schools and for those in teacher training."
Unique teacher training course
AEC head Dr Bryan Cowling is also hopeful that public school teachers will benefit from the AEC's new intensive diploma course run in conjunction with Moore Theological College.
One of the new units to be delivered at the January intensive is Christian Studies Methods, which explores how faith development occurs in children of different ages.
"This will have great relevance to anyone teaching children and young people," says Dr Cowling.
Sydney Diocese's Moore College and the Australian Catholic University are the only institutions in Australia to offer this subject.
Units of this new intensive-mode Diploma of Biblical Studies course are completed in a week-long block, allowing teachers to complete whole subjects in their school holidays.
Last school holidays, primary school teacher Tim Ryman from Penrith Anglican College (PAC) convinced his colleague Phil Hollins to join him after Phil's ski holiday fell through.
"It was great because you can really sink your teeth into it when you can do a week full-time," said Mr Hollins. "Ongoing part-time study is just really draining and it just takes up a lot of your life outside of work, whereas this was perfect."
Joined by teachers from a dozen other Anglican schools, as well as a lone public school teacher, they formed the first group to embark on the new intensive-mode diploma.
Back in the classroom, Tim Ryman says the course has given him far more confidence, both in answering the "curly questions' and teaching the Divinity curriculum.
"When teaching the story of Moses to my class in Divinity I didn't just talk about how Moses was a good person and we should trust God like he did. Instead, after learning about biblical theology and how to apply it, I was able to show the students Moses' role in the big picture ... and how his rescue of the Israelites pointed to Jesus rescuing us from sin."
Dr Cowling believes even those subjects that focus entirely on understanding the Bible would be of benefit to Christian teachers in the State system.
"Although they would not use it to teach Christian Studies, they would be better equipped to teach the regular curriculum in so far as their having a better grasp of biblical theology" enabling them to critique the worldviews on which the subjects they teach are based," he said.
But even more so, Dr Cowling explains, the course will help them to be better equipped to respond to the out-of-the-blue question from students about life and death.
"That can happen any day and at any time. Most Christian teachers get thrown by the big questions. This diploma gives them a more confident grasp of what they believe," he said.
Should we play ball?
From any perspective the recent Federal Government decision to introduce chaplains into public schools is a radical response to the values debate and the growth of private Christian schools.
When a tragic double suicide recently rocked a south coast State high school community, one of the school's paid Scripture teachers was able to offer solace with a Christian memorial service in the garden she had earlier been asked to dedicate in memory of students and staff who had died.
The Rev Peter Robinson, recently appointed CEO of GenR8 Ministries " the NSW schools ministry joint venture between Anglican Youthworks, Baptist Union, Scripture Union and Presbyterian Youth " offers this snapshot to illustrate the potential of the Federal Government's new welfare-oriented National Schools Chaplaincy Program.
As the Connect09 campaign intensifies calls for churches to re-engage State schools at the local level, Mr Robinson hopes he can "motivate churches across NSW, and especially Sydney Anglicans, to wholeheartedly take every opportunity to support the health, wellbeing and educational mission of every State school by being fully committed to the ministry opportunities we have in them".
The evidence suggests Sydney Anglicans have been painfully slow to take up the opportunities. The need for more support even for core gospel ministries like Special Religious Education (SRE) is undeniable. Then there is the question of whether churches should be more deeply engaged with local schools, offering more comprehensive support.
Ian Wing, one of NSW's leading State school principals, believes that churches' ministry connections with State high schools would be much stronger if they could offer assistance with welfare issues.
"There are welfare needs the church could address through Anglicare," he says, explaining that lack of counselling services for young people is one of "the greatest needs for State schools'.
Mr Wing has to regularly grapple with the difficult welfare issues that come with running a comprehensive school: refugee children recovering from trauma; students who find themselves homeless.
"A number of our students are not living with their parents and are close to destitute," he says.
The ideal picture painted by Mr Robinson and Mr Wing is not a dichotomy between "welfare' and "gospel' ministries, but one where a full range of formal ministries are working together with a youth minister from a local church running lunchtime Inter-School Christian Fellowship groups.
The debate about the National Schools Chaplaincy Program represents in microcosm the angst about Christian ministry in the State school system coming from all quarters.
The Howard Government appears to have conceived the chaplaincy program as a way of addressing the lack of resources for welfare needs in State schools, whilst also placating the concerns of churches, overwhelmingly outside NSW, worried that State schools were shutting their doors to Scripture classes.
There was immediate disquiet from humanist groups, with the Atheist Foundation muttering about legal challenges that have yet to materialise and web-based campaigns to dob in any chaplains who breach the guidelines against prosyletism in public schools.
Sydney Anglicans have also been largely lukewarm about the program, worried it would corrupt their churches' evangelistic goals.
A few years ago when the chaplaincy plan was first raised, Dr Grant Maple, then head of the AEC, was firmly opposed on the grounds that it would undermine the explicit Christian ministry provided by SRE in NSW.
"" SRE teachers have the potential to contribute to student welfare… but they can also teach students about Jesus, which chaplains in some states are prohibited from doing," Dr Maple wrote. "Furthermore, natural justice would demand that, in a school with a majority of non-Christian students, a non-Christian chaplain would be appointed. Is that what we would like to see if it were to mean that access to SRE was lost?"
GenR8's Peter Robinson agrees that many Sydney Anglicans, including himself, were "very wary' two years ago, mainly due to fears that the National School Chaplaincy Program could undermine SRE in NSW.
"We were concerned that [welfare-oriented] chaplaincy might be used as a wedge against Scripture, but I don't see any evidence of that at the moment" Principals I have spoken to who have chaplains in their schools have been overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the program, even at this early stage."
Ian Wing agrees with this assessment, and believes many more State schools would have come on board if there had been another funding round.
Show us the money
The initial lack of enthusiasm amongst churches to sponsor chaplaincy programs in NSW State schools is reflected in the grants. Nationwide 1,895 State schools received grants, nearly 75 per cent of the total grants. In NSW the proportion was much lower, closer to 40 per cent of grants.
GenR8 " formed in order to boost the number of combined church Scripture boards providing SRE in NSW high schools " has become the largest single provider of chaplains in NSW with 35. Nevertheless, this pales in comparison to the 550 chaplains employed through Scripture Union Queensland.
Due to NSW's unique SRE provisions, it is difficult to make comparisons between states, but it does appear that the enthusiasm in other states for the chaplaincy program has significantly boosted formal ministry there, with the potential to leave NSW behind.
Compared to Queensland, in NSW there are just 210 public school chaplains plus 91 high school SRE boards employing 140 mostly part-time SRE secondary teachers.
GenR8 currently runs four SRE boards but hopes to have 80 by next year, employing another 90 Scripture teachers.
"There are over 400 state high schools in NSW, so the scope for growth is huge. Then there is the question of raising up paid coordinators for primary school SRE, an issue we will look at in a couple of years' time," says Peter Robinson.
Looking forward, Mr Robinson is particularly keen that churches see the issue of supporting chaplaincy and SRE as separate "but potentially interacting' approaches.
"They are somewhat different skill sets, and different roles" At a formal level they don't appear to have much to do with each other, but they can each contribute to an overall strategy of effective ministry serving schools and their communities."
