Dr Darren Iselin, Director of Research and Innovation at Christian Schools Australia, explores what is driving the growth of a Christian education.
Australia is in a unique position with government-funded public and private school sectors. The private or non-government sector is based on the premise of choice. In 2023 over 43 per cent of all senior secondary students in Australia were educated by the private sector1. Christian Schools Australia (CSA) as an Australia-wide member association of growing independent Christian schools, recognises that parents are actively selecting schools. But exactly what is it that is influencing and driving their choices?
To gain further insight into the reasons behind the statistical growth of the Christian education sector, in 2021 and 2023, CSA partnered with ORIMA Research to investigate parent voices across member schools. Nearly 15,000 parents from over 100 schools have now participated in the Christian Schools Community Profile (CSCP) survey and it has become the largest survey of its kind ever undertaken on parent perceptions in Australian Christian schools.
Insights from parents are important as they highlight the value given to the variety of factors that contribute to school choice. For CSA, the place of faith and religious instruction is of particular interest. Schools are more than places of knowledge transmission but are, fundamentally, places of formation. As CSA’s collaborative work in the Cardus Education Survey (2021)2 has shown, schools will shape the citizens of society and imbue students with a set of behaviours and attitudes.
There are very clear factors influencing parent choice in Australia. The following four themes summarise the key findings of this latest 2023 CSCP survey:
1. Parents intentionally choose schools that align with Christian values and beliefs
The findings confirm that parents from Christian schools across Australia are making informed decisions regarding the choice of Christian schools within a highly competitive educational marketplace and are intentionally preferencing strong character and Christian values. Key findings included:
- The dominant reason why parents are choosing CSA schools was the desire for a school that supports ‘values that align with my own’ with 74 per cent of parents indicating teaching of traditional Christian values and beliefs as extremely, or very important in their choice of a school. Parents desire a school where they perceive their personal beliefs are reinforced by the school community they select for their children.
- The importance of community service (69 per cent) as a demonstration of Christian values and beliefs was also highly regarded by parents seeking a Christian school for their children. Parents from Victorian Christian schools (72 per cent) were more likely than any other state in Australia to identify community service as an important characteristic of Christian schools, and this finding supports results from the Cardus Education Survey Australia project regarding the importance of community service and outreach opportunities for students.
- 61 per cent of parents made their decision regarding a Christian school in less than six months and 83 per cent took 12 months or less to decide on a Christian school. These findings contrast with the comparatively longer decision-making by parents in other private schools.
2. Parents seek a supportive relational school community
The CSCP findings confirmed that families value and were most satisfied with the safety, care and supportiveness of Christian schools and the quality of relationships between teachers and students. These findings also support the results of the Relational Schools Project3, which concluded that the level of relationships between teachers and students within Christian schools was strongly correlated to an overall sense of relational belonging. Key findings included:
- The caring and supportive nature of Christian schools was identified by parents with ‘supportive’, ‘Christ-centred’ and ‘safe’ the top three words that were used to describe their schools, closely followed by ‘respectful’ and ‘nurturing’. Parents were overwhelmingly “extremely” or “very satisfied” with the ‘safety and supportiveness’ of their school (81 per cent of respondents).
- Relationships were also very important to parents choosing Christian schools, with ‘Quality of teacher/student relationships’ being identified as a key feature of school choice by respondents. These findings highlight the unique nature of Christian schools in embodying the distinctly Christian ethos in the daily interaction of staff and students.
3. Parents value quality educational outcomes that are affordable and lead to flourishing
Whilst Christian schools promote academic learning and career preparation, they are also highly intentional about the promotion of human flourishing and holistic development at an affordable price. Key findings included:
- Parents were satisfied with the overall affordability of school fees in Christian schools across the nation with 44 per cent extremely satisfied or very satisfied, and 89 per cent expressing some level of satisfaction with the school fees currently being charged in Christian schools.
- Parents were also extremely satisfied with the graduate outcomes and overall performance of Christian schools across the nation. Parents were most satisfied with the way Christian schools contribute to the common good within society (76 per cent) and how graduates interact with the society and culture around them (74 per cent), findings that are also reinforced in the 2020 Cardus Education Survey Australia Report.
4. Parents value Christian education and spirituality in a post-institutional age
Whilst recent Australian census data confirms an overall decline in the proportion of Australians with a religious affiliation and a rise in the number of those reporting ‘no religion’4, the findings of the CSCP survey show that, when asked to identify their own personal view of God, parents from Christian schools overwhelmingly selected ‘God is a personal being involved in the lives of people today’ (82 per cent) with only three per cent of all respondents reporting that they believe that ‘God does not exist’. Whilst parents who have enrolled their children in a Christian school may be more sympathetic to the idea of a God than the general population, it nevertheless suggests that the support for the idea of God is still strong for parents seeking a Christian school for their children, irrespective of their religious commitment or church attendance.
The CSCP survey provides detailed, evidence based, national and state benchmarks for parent choice of CSA member schools that enables trends to be monitored, analysed and evaluated both now and into the future. The findings reveal that parents are deliberately choosing Christian schools because of a high regard for the caring and supportive communities that Christian schools cultivate. Parents are also intentionally seeking an alignment with their family values and beliefs and are very satisfied with the educational quality and graduate outcomes that Christian schools provide. It is hoped that these findings will continue to stimulate meaningful, evidence-based conversation, reflection and analysis regarding the parent communities that choose Christian schools across Australia and lead to improved ways of engaging families and communities across all Christian schools.
References
Independent Schools Council of Australia. (2024). Snapshot 2024. Available at https://isa.edu.au/documents/media-release-isa-snapshot-2024-more-parents-are-choosing-independent-schools/
Cheng, A. and Iselin, D. (2020). Australian Schools and the Common Good. Ontario: Canada.
Loe, R. (2018). Being and Belonging: Teacher and Student Relationships in Christian Schools. CSA Relational Schools Project. Sydney: NSW https://www.csa.edu.au/CSA/Resources-and-Media/Resource-Pages/Relational-Schools.aspx
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2020). Religious Affiliation in Australia: Census 2021. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics
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