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Catholic education in Australia

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Catholic education in Australia

Catholic education in Australia refers to the education services provided by the Catholic Church in Australia within the Australian education system. From 18th century foundations, the Catholic education system has grown to be the second biggest provider of school-based education in Australia, after government schools. The Catholic Church has established primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions in Australia. As of 2018, one in five Australian students attend Catholic schools. There are 1,755 Catholic schools in Australia with more than 777,000 students enrolled, employing almost 100,000 staff.

Administrative oversight of Catholic education providers varies depending on the origins, ethos, and purpose of each education provider. Oversight of Catholic systemic schools may rest with a Catholic parish, diocese, or archdiocese; while religious institutes have oversight of Catholic independent schools; and Catholic universities are administered through an academic senate.

The first permanent Catholics in Australia came on the First Fleet to Sydney in 1788. One-tenth of all the convicts who came to Australia on the First Fleet were Catholic and at least half of them were born in Ireland. A small proportion of British marines were also Catholic.

Just as the British were setting up the new colony, French captain Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse arrived off Botany Bay with two ships. La Pérouse was six weeks in Port Jackson, where the French, besides other things, held Catholic Masses.

Some of the Irish convicts had been transported to Australia for political crimes or social rebellion in Ireland, so the authorities were suspicious of the minority church for the first three decades of settlement. Catholic convicts were compelled to attend Church of England services and their children and orphans were raised by the authorities as Anglicans. The first Catholic priest colonists arrived in Australia as convicts in 1800 – convicted for "complicity" in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. The Irish-led Castle Hill convict rebellion of 1804 alarmed the British authorities and the priests permission to celebrate Mass was revoked. Priests were not officially permitted to travel to the colony until 1820.

At first, the Church of England was the established Christian church in the colony, and during the early years of transportation all convicts were required to attend Anglican services on Sundays. This included Irish Catholics as well as Jews. Similarly, education in the new settlement was Anglican-controlled until the 1840s.

Free "charity schools" run by other denominations gradually came into existence later.

The absence of a Catholic mission in Australia before 1818 reflected the legal disabilities of Catholics in Britain and the difficult position of Ireland within the British Empire, but by 1833, there were around ten Catholic schools in the Australian colonies. The Church of England lost its legal privileges in the Colony of New South Wales following the Church Act of 1836. Drafted by the Catholic attorney-general John Plunkett, the act established legal equality for Anglicans, Catholics and Presbyterians and was later extended to Methodists.

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