Being the only Edmund Rice Education Australia school in our local ACT system, and in the day-to-day business of a school term in full swing, we don’t always think of ourselves as part of a larger network. That said, being an Edmund Rice school very much infuses our sense of purpose and identity with the charism of Edmund Rice. Over the past number of years, Edmund Rice Education Australia has developed and more recently released an articulation of what it means to be an Edmund Rice school to the public called the EREA Learning Statement: https://www.erea.edu.au/learning-statement/. This statement identifies Liberating Pedagogies, Liberating Achievement, Liberating Voice & Agency, Liberating Potential, Liberating Learning Desing, and Liberating Spirituality as the markers of Liberating Practice in EREA schools.
The document is in many ways aspirational and each EREA school will need to interpret it in their own context. That said, as a community it does offer us a strong statement of values about what education can look like, and can achieve. I would encourage anyone who is interested to know more about what Edmund Rice Education Australia is all about to spend time with the statement in order to better understand EREA, and the larger context and community of schools that we sit within.
Tim Bibbens
Assistant Principal-Teaching and Learning