From Christian Foundations to a Living Reality
At our school (The Illawarra Grammar School), we have a visual model that represents the 'package' of an Illawarra Grammar Education. It's called the 'Colonnade Model' and it has 'Christian Foundations', clearly diagrammed. It's a helpful picture because it says something important about who we are. Christianity is not an added extra to school life. It's the foundation on which everything else stands, shaping what we value, how we teach, how we care for students, and what we believe education is ultimately for.
But a model like that also raises an important question: how do we ensure our Christian Foundations are not only something we display, but something that is a living reality across the school? This question matters particularly for an Anglican school with open enrolment and open employment. We welcome families from many backgrounds, and not every student, parent, or staff member personally names Jesus as Lord. That is not an obstacle to be embarrassed by, but it does create an important tension. How can Christian Foundations genuinely shape the life of the school without asking every person in the school community to speak in exactly the same way or carry exactly the same role?
A couple of years ago, Rev. Andrew Katay led a professional development session for our staff, helping us begin to spell out what it means to be an Anglican school in practice, not just in name. One of the thinkers he directed us towards was Neil Postman. In The End of Education, Postman argues that schools are never merely places where information is transferred. Education always depends on a deeper story. He writes that "education depends absolutely on the existence of shared narratives.”
That was a clarifying insight. Every school tells a story. Every school gives students some account of what life is for, what matters most, what kind of people they should become, and what future is worth pursuing. The question is not whether a school will shape students’ imaginations, loves, hopes, and habits. It will. The question is whether we are clear about the story that is shaping ours.
For an Anglican school, that deepest story is centred on Jesus Christ. Colossians tells us that “all things have been created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16), and that in Christ “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3). This means the Christian faith is not simply one area of school life among others. It offers a way of understanding reality itself: the world students study, the people they become, the knowledge they pursue, and the wisdom they need. As Andrew Katay explored with us, the challenge for an Anglican school is to keep the whole Christian story alive, all its movements speaking together, and at times held in tension, without allowing one part of the story to cancel out another. We need to hold together creation and fall, dignity and brokenness, redemption and renewal. God made the world good, ordered, beautiful, and meaningful; human beings are created in his image, with dignity, purpose, and responsibility; yet the world is also marked by deep brokenness in human hearts, relationships, communities, and creation itself. In Jesus Christ, God acts to redeem and restore. The Christian hope is not escape from the world, but the renewal of all things under Christ, the one through whom and for whom all things were made.
Crucially, not all parts of the school carry the Christian story in the same way. In fact, for Christian Foundations to become a living reality, we need to recognise the different but connected roles played by chapel, Biblical Studies, and the wider curriculum.
Chapel keeps the big story alive. It is one of the few times when the whole school gathers and hears, clearly and publicly, the Christian account of reality. Chapel names Christ. It gives students the language of praise, prayer, confession, forgiveness, trust, and hope. Week by week, it reminds us that our foundation is not simply a set of values, but the living God made known in Jesus.
Biblical Studies provides depth. It gives students time to understand the Bible, ask honest questions, explore Christian belief, and consider how the Christian faith speaks to life, meaning, suffering, ethics, identity, justice, and hope. It helps students see that Christianity is not a vague moral atmosphere, but a coherent and compelling account of the world and our place within it.
Other classroom subjects then contribute in different but vital ways. They do not need to carry the same role as chapel or Biblical Studies. Their contribution is not to make every lesson explicitly Christian, but to help students ask the good questions their subjects genuinely raise, but don't have the resources to answer.
Science, for example, naturally opens up questions of order, beauty, wonder, humility, interdependence, and responsibility. When students study ecosystems, they are not only learning biological processes. They are encountering a world of relationship, fragility, dependence, and care. A teacher might ask: What responsibilities come with knowledge and power over the natural world? That question belongs naturally within Science; it's not an added-on Christian appendage. But the Christian story gives a deeper frame for answering it: the world is not raw material for our use, but creation made through Christ and for Christ, entrusted to human beings to study, enjoy, and steward.
English offers another example. Literature constantly raises questions of longing, identity, guilt, courage, forgiveness, failure, love, and hope. When students study a character who is proud, broken, restored, or changed, they are not only analysing technique. They are reflecting on what human beings are like. A teacher might ask: Why do stories of sacrifice, reconciliation, and homecoming move us so deeply? Again, the question genuinely arises from the subject. But the Christian story gives a profound answer: we are people made for communion with God and one another, marked by brokenness, and drawn towards restoration, forgiveness, and home.
This approach respects staff and their mastery over their particular subjects. It doesn't ask them to attempt to teach subject matter they are unfamiliar with or might not personally believe. Rather, it invites teachers to teach their disciplines with depth, attentiveness, and moral seriousness. It also encourages them to notice the moments where their subject naturally raises bigger questions about life and the world; questions that ultimately can't be answered from within their subject domain, but outside it (in Christ).
In that sense, Christian Foundations shape the curriculum not by turning every subject into Biblical Studies, but by giving the school a shared story within which learning makes sense. Chapel keeps that story alive. Biblical Studies explores it in depth. The wider curriculum helps students encounter the world that the story describes: a world of truth, beauty, goodness, brokenness, responsibility, longing, and hope.
The aim is not that every lesson sounds the same. The aim is that our Christian Foundations contribute genuinely, meaningfully, and substantially to the work of a school in forming the minds of the young. Students hear the Christian story clearly in chapel. They examine it carefully in Biblical Studies. And across the curriculum, they learn to ask the kinds of deep questions to which that story speaks.
That is how Christian Foundations become more than a model. They become a living reality: not simply printed on a diagram, but by being woven into the way a school teaches, wonders and hopes, because all things were made by Christ and for Christ, and in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Written by Reverend Dave Biggneli, Chaplain at The Illawara Grammar School