New Brisbane school to focus on classics

St John Henry Newman College will be geared to the classical, Western tradition, as communities remain concerned about education standards.

A new Brisbane school will have a focus on the classical, Western tradition.

The Power family, whose father, James snr, established Campion College, Australia’s first liberal arts tertiary institution, is behind the launch of new school in Brisbane next week.

St John Henry Newman College, initially catering from Prep to Year 3, will be built at Tarragindi, on Brisbane’s southside next year, to open in 2026. One class will be added each year, with a separate campus, later, for secondary school in 2030.

Inaugural chairman and managing director of the Power group of companies, James Power, said expressions of interest from parents were strong.

The school would be geared to the classical, Western tradition, an emphasis in the early years on direct instruction, numeracy and literacy (including phonics), encouraging reading and no devices in the classroom. When history and geography were introduced the subjects would be taught factually, not laced with ideology.

Kenneth Crowther, a teacher at Toowoomba Christian College, who has been appointed principal and is completing his PhD in Shakespeare said classical schools emphasised on introducing students to the “great books’’ – from Dante to Dostoevsky.

“For the juniors, that’ll be Aesop’s fables, Beatrix Potter, Winnie the Pooh and Wind in the Willows, C.S. Lewis’s Narnia and Tolkien,’’ Mr Crowther said.

In recent years, many parents have been disappointed to find traditional favourites missing in school reading and English lessons.

As a Catholic school, religion will be part of the curriculum, with the priests of the Brisbane Oratory to serve as chaplains.

The establishment of classical schools by communities concerned about education standards has become a major trend in the US.

Australia’s first classical Orthodox school, the St John of Kronstadt Academy, opened on Brisbane’s southside this year for Prep to Year 3 and will also add a grade a year. Its stated aims are “to provide our children with a classical Orthodox curriculum that will nurture the child’s soul, mind and body, develop Orthodox wisdom and virtue and will be steeped in Orthodox faith and liturgical tradition”.

In Melbourne, the principal of St Philip’s Catholic Primary School, Blackburn North, Michelle Worcester and Parish Priest Fr Nicholas Dillon will oversee the transformation of the local Catholic school to a classical model next year and in 2026. The change has the support of Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools authorities and will be first of its kind under the system.

Based on parental interest and inquiries, which have come from as far away as country Victoria, Fr Dillon expects to the school numbers, which have fallen to 29, to double in the first year.

Similar transformations of schools in the US over the past 40 years had seen small enrolments expand to 300. “Parents are looking for a quality back-to-basics approach and want their children introduced to classical literature and Western civilisation,’’ Fr Dillon said.

St John Henry Newman College will be launched at the Brisbane Oratory on Thursday, July 11. Its patrons include businessman and Brisbane Broncos chairman Karl Morris and retired computer scientist, businessman and former Dean of Bond University business school and author Ashley Goldsworthy.