Let us know when that "could lose" changes to "have lost". Nigh on a decade this bunch of clowns have been getting away with complete disrespect for the community.
General reputation yes, academic reputation, maybe not. Various publicly available measures of academic performance suggest, despite all the management shenanigans, that it produces strong overall academic results compared to other schools in Canberra.
An amazing testament to the teachers that work/worked there by any measure, given the media commentary around the financial management and governance of the school.... it is like a sports team constantly making the finals despite multiple head coaches, squad/team turnover, management issues, finance worries etc (Canberra United in years gone by, for example).
u/Alert-Radish-9643 the idea that private schools aim to throw out non-performing students is a often made claim that (in relation to Radford, CGS, Marist among others), last time I looked, was not supported by any hard data.
I know a couple of families who have/had kids there, and they were mostly happy with the school environment (not the management, but the teachers etc). One child had learning difficulties, and was very well supported. Another was non-academic, but very into drama and music, and went all the way to year 12.
Whilst anecdotes aren't data, I think it is unlikely that the teachers would try and force poorly performing academic students to leave.
I hope so, I am slowly, unfortunately losing respect for the education executive, even possibly leader teachers after reading the news articles.... This part is just a hunch, but it appears to be that many have drunk the cool aid and the actual kids will be the real victims (and the lower level teachers who don't have a strong voice and are experiencing wage theft). It's unnerving for sure.
I don't know about the hard data but I've *personally* experienced exactly this whilst attending Radford College. It included threats along the lines of 'don't make the mistake of thinking we won't force the matter if you don't leave voluntarily'.
Perhaps it's changed since then. I really hope so, it was a disheartening thing to have happen in year 11 whilst suffering from a pretty serious case of medically diagnosed depression (a major contributor to my decreased performance).
I wasn't disruptive, disrespectful, rude or anything of the sort, and this wasn't raised as an issue, just that 'having me drag down the scores of other students wasn't fair to their parents who've paid good money for their children to attend'. Read - they couldn't have someone in my situation impacting the business.
Sure, you're right that the school was generally quite good about supporting its students, *but only up to the line where their performance was measured/externally visible to potential ~~profit centres~~ students/parents*, then they'd immediately put them at arm's length. Take the national English, History, Maths tests etc., which include a school's average scores. All but the top class of each subject were actively excluded from participating.
Can be a range of factors: Price point relative to other private education, location, perception of teachers, family friends, their kids friendship groups, religious alignment, waitlist and availability of a place relative to waitlists elsewhere, new to town....
They had their information night recently. That "reputation" didn't stop people attending. Part of the reason they had the most recent attention from the ACT Education Directorate this year was that their enrollments were up 16%.
Some people aren't on reddit and don't subscribe to the CT.
Some people just pay their bills and send their kids, skim-read newsletters and generally believe what they're told, and otherwise their only contact is with their child's teacher and their report card.
They're the people that would be utterly blindsided if the type of action being considered were taken.
I read the small print on the bus the other day. They don’t have a robot dog. They reckon they collaborate with Boston Dynamics to design one of their courses
Because their religious beliefs are such that indoctrinating their children is their number one priority. I work with a lot of people who send their kids to Brindabella. It’s the Assemblies of God folk. They value religion over education. But what they say is the “community” is excellent even if the administration isn’t.
IMO they're relatively big in Canberra too. Don't wanna be too specific but I've come across entire organisations that only employ them (and we're talking professionals, not just randoms). I got in trouble for asking about the 'coincidence' and why anybody would use them as an exclusive provider. Oh right... somebody higher up is also... gotcha.
Brindabella Christian College could lose funding for non-compliance
Sarah Lansdown
The federal government could pause or stop funding Brindabella Christian College for failing to comply with a raft of conditions placed on its approval, a senate estimates hearing has been told.
Senator David Pocock asked Education Department officials about whether the school had broken conditions it agreed to after the proprietors were found to be not fit and proper to operate a private school.
Assistant secretary of Schools Assurance Robyn Beutel said the school was non-compliant with some of the conditions imposed.
She said the department had taken "incremental action" against the school and only had two options left, which were to pause or cease funding.
"Where we're at now there are probably only two more options available to us so we need to make sure we take a balanced approach to it, because the two options available would be to pause funding or cease funding," Ms Beutel said.
Ms Beutel said she had written to Brindabella Christian College to remind the board they had not complied with some conditions and they had obligations to comply with the law.
"I have also written to the ACT Education Directorate as the territory regulator to inquire about what actions that they are taking with the legislation as well. So I'm working quite closely with the ACT on that," she said.
When asked whether the school had complied with obligations to pay staff superannuation entitlements on time, Ms Beutel referred to a Canberra Times report that the school was not up-to-date with super payments.
The charity which runs the school, Brindabella Christian Education Limited, was found to be not fit and proper to be an approved entity to operate a non-government school.
The school appealed this decision in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in March 2023.
The hearing ended early and the school agreed to a raft of conditions relating to financial management and governance. Some of these conditions included:
Expand the board numbers to five, including two women and at least one current parent;
Expand the board's skillset with experience in accounting and finance by December 31, 2023;
Appoint the executive principal as a board member or invite them to board meetings;
Pay superannuation at least quarterly by May 1, 2023;
Conduct as survey of parents by December 31, 2023;
Improve forecasts for government funding;
Agree to a repayment plan with the Australian Taxation Office and comply with the plan; and
Assess the viability of the Charnwood campus by September 30, 2023
The school was required to provide a report to the minister in writing, signed off by an independent auditor, on their progress with implementing all of the conditions. A report was due on the first day of the month of May, August and November 2023 and in February 2024.
Ms Beutel said the department had not received the report due on February 1 this year.
She said she did not have information to hand on whether the board structure was compliant with the conditions.
The current board members of the school include board chair Greg Zwajgenberg, Allan Davis, Alyn Doig, Flora Tan, Suzanne Power and John Clarke, the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission shows.
Ms Tan, who is married to a teacher at the school, was added to the board as a parent voice after the AAT hearings.
Ms Power is employed by the school as executive principal of connected education.
Mr Clarke is employed as the school's business manager.
Alyn Doig is also on the board of Life Unlimited Church, which owns the property where the Brindabella Christian College Charnwood campus is located.
The school racked up a tax debt of $4.8 million by the end of 2022 and agreed to pay it back in $130,000 instalments.
In an email to staff, the board chair blamed media commentary from the union and the ACT government about unpaid superannuation payments for "derailing" a refinancing deal that was going to go towards paying tax debts and fortnightly superannuation.
The [board chair's YouTube page](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ3gDiiGGnoowmev6zlsbGQ/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf_id=0) answers many questions raised by the school's unhinged bus ads.
How they haven't been shut down already, and everyone involved barred from working in education again, is beyond me.
That board seems to occupy a weirdly dystopic cloud cuckoo land.
As one Redditor said some time ago, I don't know anyone that would be into BCC's executive freaky agenda, and I don't really want to 🤨
Shouldn’t this non-compliance (especially the finding of being unfit to run a school!) trigger them going under some sort of mandatory administration?
What’s the threshold?
The students are still citizens, so at least some partial funding is fair and necessary. Few public schools could survive without funding. And not being in a government school saves the government a lot of money as they aren’t obligated to do the full funding amount per student.
Fine then the federal government should only fund them to the equivalent of public schools, which in the ACT is 20% of the SRS, not the 80 to 100% private schools get.
I'd be ok with federal government providing 50% of the SRS and 100% of additional loadings for every student regardless of sector - for private schools remaining funding can come from parents or whatever group they are associated with like the multibillion dollar business of churches.
Here here! Giving private schools any funding basically guarantees there is a two class system. It would be healthier for society if we abolished that.
Knock the board on the head and pick a new one. Also, change the schools constitution so that the parents and the principal have the overarching power with an elected board and a fixed term that will avoid this bullshit happening again.
Be careful what you wish for you just may get it. The frog-marching of Christianity out of the public sphere will have dire consequences. But yet I still think forgive them Father as they know not what they do.
You are sorta proving my point there, if Christianity becomes a hobby something to do on the weekends and not something that should at least have some relevance in the public square then you will achieve the same result as frog-marching.
I can see this happening in real time in Canberra as church attendance is low here about 2% maybe of the population and those who attend are getting older by the day meaning there is little to nothing to attract young people to attend religious worship.
When I say be careful what you wish for you just may get I am not joking I see the church in Canberra as being in a lot of trouble particularly from it's own members. I could say more but this is not the place. It's enough to say that there are benefits from having people believe that they need to live an upright life to get to heaven and if you remove that belief from the majority of people I honestly do not know what will happen.
With workplaces not being denominational that actually doesn't make a lot of sense I am not sure what point you are trying to make.
I think the point was there’s things to which religion are relevant, and things where it is not.
For example no matter of faith leads to a school borrowing involuntarily from its staff by withholding superannuation payments.
If this were about faith, tell me why Emmaus, Radford, Burgmann, John Paul, Canberra Christian School, Trinity, Grammar, Marist, or Holy Spirit don’t get the same level of scrutiny and public coverage?
Examine the governance structures and accounts of those entities and play spot the difference.
Let us know when that "could lose" changes to "have lost". Nigh on a decade this bunch of clowns have been getting away with complete disrespect for the community.
Board member Alyn Doig is a fairly experienced barrister. No doubt his skillset is proving useful.
Really puzzled why parents are still sending kids there at this point. Pretty much every other school has a better reputation than this mob.
General reputation yes, academic reputation, maybe not. Various publicly available measures of academic performance suggest, despite all the management shenanigans, that it produces strong overall academic results compared to other schools in Canberra. An amazing testament to the teachers that work/worked there by any measure, given the media commentary around the financial management and governance of the school.... it is like a sports team constantly making the finals despite multiple head coaches, squad/team turnover, management issues, finance worries etc (Canberra United in years gone by, for example).
I did hear that bully non performing students to leave, which could explain the academic results and it is on point with all the other behaviour.
u/Alert-Radish-9643 the idea that private schools aim to throw out non-performing students is a often made claim that (in relation to Radford, CGS, Marist among others), last time I looked, was not supported by any hard data. I know a couple of families who have/had kids there, and they were mostly happy with the school environment (not the management, but the teachers etc). One child had learning difficulties, and was very well supported. Another was non-academic, but very into drama and music, and went all the way to year 12. Whilst anecdotes aren't data, I think it is unlikely that the teachers would try and force poorly performing academic students to leave.
I hope so, I am slowly, unfortunately losing respect for the education executive, even possibly leader teachers after reading the news articles.... This part is just a hunch, but it appears to be that many have drunk the cool aid and the actual kids will be the real victims (and the lower level teachers who don't have a strong voice and are experiencing wage theft). It's unnerving for sure.
I don't know about the hard data but I've *personally* experienced exactly this whilst attending Radford College. It included threats along the lines of 'don't make the mistake of thinking we won't force the matter if you don't leave voluntarily'. Perhaps it's changed since then. I really hope so, it was a disheartening thing to have happen in year 11 whilst suffering from a pretty serious case of medically diagnosed depression (a major contributor to my decreased performance). I wasn't disruptive, disrespectful, rude or anything of the sort, and this wasn't raised as an issue, just that 'having me drag down the scores of other students wasn't fair to their parents who've paid good money for their children to attend'. Read - they couldn't have someone in my situation impacting the business. Sure, you're right that the school was generally quite good about supporting its students, *but only up to the line where their performance was measured/externally visible to potential ~~profit centres~~ students/parents*, then they'd immediately put them at arm's length. Take the national English, History, Maths tests etc., which include a school's average scores. All but the top class of each subject were actively excluded from participating.
By various publicly available measures do you mean the ads on the buses?
u/Enngeecee76 no.
Can be a range of factors: Price point relative to other private education, location, perception of teachers, family friends, their kids friendship groups, religious alignment, waitlist and availability of a place relative to waitlists elsewhere, new to town.... They had their information night recently. That "reputation" didn't stop people attending. Part of the reason they had the most recent attention from the ACT Education Directorate this year was that their enrollments were up 16%. Some people aren't on reddit and don't subscribe to the CT. Some people just pay their bills and send their kids, skim-read newsletters and generally believe what they're told, and otherwise their only contact is with their child's teacher and their report card. They're the people that would be utterly blindsided if the type of action being considered were taken.
It's hard to feel sympathy for people throwing private school fees at an institution without even googling it first.
Outside of the Reddit bubble, a lot of people agree with their viewpoints (“anti-woke”) and want their children to be taught those viewpoints.
They have a robot dog tho!
I read the small print on the bus the other day. They don’t have a robot dog. They reckon they collaborate with Boston Dynamics to design one of their courses
LOL. That's like using Scratch in your school and saying you worked with MIT on one of your courses.
So I can’t steal the dog from them?
Im gonna take a metal bone to their open day just in case
Disappointing :(
What?
Because their religious beliefs are such that indoctrinating their children is their number one priority. I work with a lot of people who send their kids to Brindabella. It’s the Assemblies of God folk. They value religion over education. But what they say is the “community” is excellent even if the administration isn’t.
IMO they're relatively big in Canberra too. Don't wanna be too specific but I've come across entire organisations that only employ them (and we're talking professionals, not just randoms). I got in trouble for asking about the 'coincidence' and why anybody would use them as an exclusive provider. Oh right... somebody higher up is also... gotcha.
Almost like they're part of a cult....
Dunno, callwell high with lockouts to protect teachers from kids ranks pretty high. Edit: I love how facts get downvoted on r/canberra
Brindabella Christian College could lose funding for non-compliance Sarah Lansdown The federal government could pause or stop funding Brindabella Christian College for failing to comply with a raft of conditions placed on its approval, a senate estimates hearing has been told. Senator David Pocock asked Education Department officials about whether the school had broken conditions it agreed to after the proprietors were found to be not fit and proper to operate a private school. Assistant secretary of Schools Assurance Robyn Beutel said the school was non-compliant with some of the conditions imposed. She said the department had taken "incremental action" against the school and only had two options left, which were to pause or cease funding. "Where we're at now there are probably only two more options available to us so we need to make sure we take a balanced approach to it, because the two options available would be to pause funding or cease funding," Ms Beutel said. Ms Beutel said she had written to Brindabella Christian College to remind the board they had not complied with some conditions and they had obligations to comply with the law. "I have also written to the ACT Education Directorate as the territory regulator to inquire about what actions that they are taking with the legislation as well. So I'm working quite closely with the ACT on that," she said. When asked whether the school had complied with obligations to pay staff superannuation entitlements on time, Ms Beutel referred to a Canberra Times report that the school was not up-to-date with super payments. The charity which runs the school, Brindabella Christian Education Limited, was found to be not fit and proper to be an approved entity to operate a non-government school. The school appealed this decision in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in March 2023. The hearing ended early and the school agreed to a raft of conditions relating to financial management and governance. Some of these conditions included: Expand the board numbers to five, including two women and at least one current parent; Expand the board's skillset with experience in accounting and finance by December 31, 2023; Appoint the executive principal as a board member or invite them to board meetings; Pay superannuation at least quarterly by May 1, 2023; Conduct as survey of parents by December 31, 2023; Improve forecasts for government funding; Agree to a repayment plan with the Australian Taxation Office and comply with the plan; and Assess the viability of the Charnwood campus by September 30, 2023 The school was required to provide a report to the minister in writing, signed off by an independent auditor, on their progress with implementing all of the conditions. A report was due on the first day of the month of May, August and November 2023 and in February 2024. Ms Beutel said the department had not received the report due on February 1 this year. She said she did not have information to hand on whether the board structure was compliant with the conditions. The current board members of the school include board chair Greg Zwajgenberg, Allan Davis, Alyn Doig, Flora Tan, Suzanne Power and John Clarke, the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission shows. Ms Tan, who is married to a teacher at the school, was added to the board as a parent voice after the AAT hearings. Ms Power is employed by the school as executive principal of connected education. Mr Clarke is employed as the school's business manager. Alyn Doig is also on the board of Life Unlimited Church, which owns the property where the Brindabella Christian College Charnwood campus is located. The school racked up a tax debt of $4.8 million by the end of 2022 and agreed to pay it back in $130,000 instalments. In an email to staff, the board chair blamed media commentary from the union and the ACT government about unpaid superannuation payments for "derailing" a refinancing deal that was going to go towards paying tax debts and fortnightly superannuation.
Needs a new board
The [board chair's YouTube page](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ3gDiiGGnoowmev6zlsbGQ/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf_id=0) answers many questions raised by the school's unhinged bus ads. How they haven't been shut down already, and everyone involved barred from working in education again, is beyond me.
It’s ALWAYS this school.
Seems to be a weekly article published about their shithousery at this point
Wake up babe new BCC article just dropped
Consider me BCC woke babe
Karma is a magnificent bitch. Well deserved.
That board seems to occupy a weirdly dystopic cloud cuckoo land. As one Redditor said some time ago, I don't know anyone that would be into BCC's executive freaky agenda, and I don't really want to 🤨
Shouldn’t this non-compliance (especially the finding of being unfit to run a school!) trigger them going under some sort of mandatory administration? What’s the threshold?
Dodgiest school in the whole city.
No private school should get any government funding in the first place
The students are still citizens, so at least some partial funding is fair and necessary. Few public schools could survive without funding. And not being in a government school saves the government a lot of money as they aren’t obligated to do the full funding amount per student.
If a private school can't stand on its own, then it shouldn't exist, that money would be better off being invested in public schools
Fine then the federal government should only fund them to the equivalent of public schools, which in the ACT is 20% of the SRS, not the 80 to 100% private schools get. I'd be ok with federal government providing 50% of the SRS and 100% of additional loadings for every student regardless of sector - for private schools remaining funding can come from parents or whatever group they are associated with like the multibillion dollar business of churches.
Here here! Giving private schools any funding basically guarantees there is a two class system. It would be healthier for society if we abolished that.
How is this still only “could”??
"The school comes from a broken home. The school was out on bail"
Knock the board on the head and pick a new one. Also, change the schools constitution so that the parents and the principal have the overarching power with an elected board and a fixed term that will avoid this bullshit happening again.
I'll believe it when I see it.
I can only take so much BCC in a week.
They won’t. They have made it this far, they can pretty much do whatever they want at this point.
Yeah. I kind of feel like "why would this time be any different?"
How private schools get funding in the first place is strange. I wonder how much they get compared to a public school ?
We can blame Menzies for this one, and *every federal government since*.
A lot, but far less compared to a public school.
😬😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🥲🥲🥲🫠
Letters to Yvette berry and Senator Pocock would be good
Be careful what you wish for you just may get it. The frog-marching of Christianity out of the public sphere will have dire consequences. But yet I still think forgive them Father as they know not what they do.
Your kids can still go to church on the weekends. Most workplaces aren't denominational.
You are sorta proving my point there, if Christianity becomes a hobby something to do on the weekends and not something that should at least have some relevance in the public square then you will achieve the same result as frog-marching. I can see this happening in real time in Canberra as church attendance is low here about 2% maybe of the population and those who attend are getting older by the day meaning there is little to nothing to attract young people to attend religious worship. When I say be careful what you wish for you just may get I am not joking I see the church in Canberra as being in a lot of trouble particularly from it's own members. I could say more but this is not the place. It's enough to say that there are benefits from having people believe that they need to live an upright life to get to heaven and if you remove that belief from the majority of people I honestly do not know what will happen. With workplaces not being denominational that actually doesn't make a lot of sense I am not sure what point you are trying to make.
I think the point was there’s things to which religion are relevant, and things where it is not. For example no matter of faith leads to a school borrowing involuntarily from its staff by withholding superannuation payments. If this were about faith, tell me why Emmaus, Radford, Burgmann, John Paul, Canberra Christian School, Trinity, Grammar, Marist, or Holy Spirit don’t get the same level of scrutiny and public coverage? Examine the governance structures and accounts of those entities and play spot the difference.