Apostolic Action Plan
2027 – 2033
Grounded in Faith
Growing in Service
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Message from the Executive Director
David de Carvalho
I am honoured to be leading the development and implementation of our Apostolic Action Plan for 2027-2033. We have an outstanding group of school principals and system leaders who are committed to ensuring the education we provide is not only second-to-none in terms of academic excellence but is faithful to our mission of making the Good News of Jesus known to all.
This starts with welcoming all families who want a Catholic education, and making our students feel known, loved and cared for. When we create a strong community, learning can happen. As individuals and communities and as a system, we will strive to be grounded in faith, while growing in service.
Our overarching strategy will focus on offering an authentic Catholic education - integral human development - in a way that meets the needs of students, families, and staff and invites them to experience the joy of a personal encounter with Jesus.
Our Foundation
The Primacy
of the Trinity
The God whose inner life is relationship.
This informs the principles of Catholic Social Teaching, which underpin our Apostolic Action Plan
Solidarity
Social Justice
The Common Good
Human Dignity
The Universal Destination of Goods
Subsidiarity
Every person is precious, created in the image and likeness of God. The measure of every institution is whether it threatens or enhances the life and
dignity of every person.
Human affairs should be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralised competent authority, with large entities to support and assist rather than absorb or supplant them.
The earth's goods are given by God to the entire human family to sustain the lives of all without excluding or favouring anyone, so they must be cared for. Private property is a means for managing goods so they may better serve the common good.
Not ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ but the sum total of all social conditions which allow people to reach their fulfilment more fully and easily.
Form of ‘civic friendship’ through which we consciously work for the fair distribution of resources for all human persons so that their dignity can be upheld. The destiny of each is tied to the destiny of all.
Requires that the poor, the marginalised and those whose living conditions interfere with their proper growth should be the focus of particular concern.
Social Justice
Requires that the poor, the marginalised and those whose living conditions interfere with their proper growth should be the focus of particular concern.
Vision
Our students become attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible and in love with the Triune God who creates, redeems and sustains them
Purpose
We exist to enliven the educational mission of the Archdiocese to make Jesus known and loved, through integral human development and invitation to faith
Our Teaching and Learning Bold Goals
Handing on important religious, social and cultural values
Teaching knowledge about the world into which students are born
Helping students to discover and develop their talents together
Equipping students with knowledge and skills to participate in the modern economy
Developing the capabilities to be active and informed citizens in a democracy
Empowering students to be agents of positive social transformation
The way of
Achievement
The way of
Tradition
Be in love
with God
Be responsible
when acting
Be reasonable
when judging
Be attentive
when experiencing
Be
attentive when
experiencing
Be intelligent
when inquiring
Our Method of Education: Integral human development, with Jesus at the centre
Values
Handing on important religious, social and cultural values
Teaching knowledge about the world into which students are born
Helping students to discover and develop their talents together
Equipping students with knowledge and skills to participate in the modern economy
Developing the capabilities to be active and informed citizens in a democracy
Empowering students to be agents of positive social transformation
‘Christian education is a collective endeavour. The educational community is a “we” where teachers, students, families, administrative and service staff, pastors and civil society converge to generate life…to flow, to nourish, to irrigate.’
What this means for
Our Regions
Access to all families
We will provide access to all families who seek a Catholic education in NSW and ACT. Informed by demand for our Schools and growth in population. Our Long-Term Capital Investment Strategy will be released in early 2027.
Apostolic Action Plan
Faith oxygenates all areas of the curriculum in every classroom
This bold goal comes from Pope Leo’s letter, “Drawing New Maps of Hope” in which he says that ‘faith is not an added “subject,” but a breath that oxygenates every other subject’ (Leo XIV, 2025). In Catholic schools, the Christian vision ‘permeates every discipline and every interaction’ (Leo XIV, 2026).
Oxygenating the curriculum with faith will mean all students and teachers are aware of themselves as both learners and doers, and aware that as they grow in understanding of truth, they grow in their relationship with God, the source of all truth. This awareness leads to a life of service to others.
Achieving this goal will entail drawing on the Catholic intellectual tradition to develop a robust curriculum framework and associated professional development program for staff and appropriate support materials. This multi-year project will be known as “Insight”.
All schools achieve above expected growth in literacy and numeracy
This bold goal also comes from “Drawing New Maps of Hope” where the Pope says that “literacy and numeracy are matters of dignity even before they are matters of competency.” It extends and incorporates our two previous bold goals (Every child is a competent reader; and High Impact Teaching Practices are visible in every classroom).
Mastery of the two foundational capabilities of literacy and numeracy is not only essential for being able to participate effectively in society as adults. Without them, it is very difficult for students to engage effectively with all the other subjects in the curriculum.
We will achieve this goal by adjusting our teaching based on information received from national, system-wide and school-level assessments, as well as the fruit of the best of current research into teaching and learning.
Our Method of Education: Integral human development, with Jesus at the centre
We will be developing an approach to curriculum and pedagogy that is based on the Australian Curriculum and NSW Syllabuses and that builds upon our well-known initiative, “Catalyst”, which focused on evidence-informed High Impact Teaching Practices, now being embedded in our everyday teaching.
The core mission of Catholic education is integral human development (intellectual, physical, emotional, spiritual, social and cultural), with Jesus at the centre. We want our students not only to be knowers, but also doers whose actions are a conscious expression of their love for God.
We call this approach the "Catholic Curriculum". It requires us to integrate faith and reason, which St John Paul II called the "two wings" by which the soul ascends to God and it combines two related movements. A "downwards" movement that hands down vital religious, social and cultural values through disciplinary knowledge about the world (the way of tradition) and an "upwards" movement that empowers students to think creatively and critically about that knowledge, so as to apply it in ways that contribute to society and transform their communities (the way of achievement).
Through this approach, our students become more attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible, and in love with God.