EREA
Australia
During this past week the first Annual General Meeting of Edmund Rice Education Australia was held. The proposed Constitution for EREA requires the EREA Council to hold an AGM at about this time in the year with the participation of the EREA Board. The Annual General Meeting itself was held on Wednesday morning in the Spirituality Room at Rostrevor College. The reports of the President and Board Chair were tabled. The audited financial statements for 2009 were received. This report was a consolidated report with all former areas now following the same Accounting procedures. This has been one of the more difficult tasks of the new organisation and has been accomplished earlier than anticipated.
Read or Print PDF documents
Letter from Br Paul Oakley, President - EREA Council
Letter from Mr Wayne Tinsey, Executive Director, EREA
Wayne Tinsey wrote to all staff recently and I will quote some of his letter here
Friends and Colleagues,
Warm greetings from National Office in Melbourne!
Our schools are purposefully called ‘Catholic schools in the Edmund Rice tradition’. Since EREA began, we’ve all been on a journey - a journey from belonging to Christian Brothers’ schools, towards belonging to Catholic schools in the Edmund Rice tradition. It is a subtle but important distinction that I draw. There are some significant areas of emphasis that may need to change if we are going to journey more fully into that sense of being Catholic schools in the Edmund Rice tradition.
Let’s first of all consider the great things that we have experienced and continue to experience as a result of our Christian Brothers’ heritage and tradition. We’ve received our charism; our dominant emphasis in mission – inspiration towards the education of the poor and those at the margins. We’ve received the inspiration of generations of Brothers who have gone before us with their selfless service of emerging generations of young people, inspired by a heightened understanding of social justice. Truly, if we can see the future with clarity, it is because we stand on the shoulders of giants!
We have also received a magnificent infrastructure of schools. One only has to look at the map of Australia in the foyer of our National Office to look at the hundreds of different foundations that the Brothers have been involved in over the last one hundred and fifty years. We are the custodians of around forty now; but we’ve inherited that extraordinary heritage and vision from the Brothers. We have inherited extraordinary social capital and influence in the Australian educational landscape.
These things rightfully constitute our living tradition that is vital to our future. However, as is the case in all aspects of our lives, there are some things from the past that may not serve us well into the future and perhaps are best being let go of. For instance, it could be argued that historically, an inordinate sense of competition amongst our schools was promoted. This has resulted in some being winners and some being losers. In extreme cases, this exaggerated competition has probably led to the closure of some schools. I would also suggest that some have allowed society’s drive towards socio-differentiation and elitism in education to influence their view of our schools’ public standing and some have actively bought into a vision of a hierarchy of schools......
