Catholic Education Week

Last Friday 21 March, over 2,000 students including our ten mission captains, joined Archbishop Peter Comensoli at St Patrick’s Cathedral for the annual Catholic Education Week (CEW) Mass. College Mission Captain, Thomas McInnes also had the opportunity to attend the Young Speakers Colloquium held after the mass where senior students explored ideas on leadership and the future of education, inspired by this year’s theme of ‘Arise, shine; for your light has come’. Our music talent was also showcased with Padua College bands providing entertainment at the primary school concert held in Fitzroy Gardens after the CEW mass.

You can read more about it here https://www.macs.vic.edu.au/Ne...

I often reflect - what will Catholic education look like into the future? Who are Catholic schools going to be for? In one year, ten years’ time, who will be the demographic that will seek our Catholic education?

Catholic education at its grassroots is an education for the disadvantaged and for those seeking an education in the Catholic faith. It is spoken about with frequency and passion at Padua College that an education in the Franciscan and Mercy Charism is for the marginalised and that needs to remain at the core of our moral purpose. It is noted that a biproduct of a quality Catholic education is that many students have been lifted or raised a societal class level.

The founders of our Catholic schools in Australia taught in tough times. When faced with hardships, they were inclusive with their intake of students into the first Catholic schools. They offered the disadvantaged children an education, as a step out of poverty. And it was successful.

Catholic Education Week is an opportunity to celebrate and promote what is a Catholic education and the great work being done in Catholic schools such as Padua College. May we listen to the spirit and see where it guides us, with the future of Catholic education.

A PL Session with Mercy Education LTD CEO

A focus for us at Padua College is to offer a range of formation opportunities for staff to participate in to support their Accreditation to Teach in a Catholic School or Accreditation to Lead/Teach RE in Catholic School. Recently we had Louisa Rennie, Mercy Education CEO lead staff with a session flavoured around our Mercy charism.

Give me some Time and Space

On Tuesdays 18 and 25 March, we welcomed Time and Space presenter Dr Kelly Harris to Padua College to run the Year 8 student and Father/Mentor program and the Year 7 student and Mother/Mentor program.

Designed to promote conversations surrounding settling into secondary school and building positive relationships between mentors and students, Dr Kelly taught our student leaders how to facilitate small breakout groups in which students and other mentors can learn and discuss their experiences of dealing with teen hood and the positives and negatives that come with that.

We greatly appreciate Dr Kelly and everyone at Time and Space for coming back to Padua for the third year in a row to run this amazing program for our community. Thanks to all student leaders who helped in setting up, running groups, and ensuring all went smoothly. And finally thank you to all the mentors and students who came and participated in the night, the feedback has been amazingly positive!

Overall, we had over 150 parents participate in the 2025 program and the involvement of 40 student leaders.

Enhancing our Partnership with Padua Parents

Any parent/community member who would like to be involved with our Parents of Padua (POP) group in 2025 or have ideas of how to strengthen our partnership with parents/guardians are invited to email me at mwilliams@padua.vic.edu.au

Student Photo Permissions

At times, photographs or videos of our students will be published in newsletters, on the school intranet or website, or in our social media. Copies of our Standard Collection Notice and Privacy Policy are available on the College website in the Enrolments section of our Policies page. Please note that consent to use these images in this way, if provided at enrolment, may be withdrawn at any time by contacting our marketing team via email: marketing@padua.vic.edu.au .