St Andrews Lutheran College

What is important about any school is what is at its heart. The College’s Mission Statement: ‘Celebrating the Gospel, Nurturing the Individual, Empowering Lifelong Learners’ stands as a firm statement about what St Andrews is on about, and has been at the heart of our College since its inception.

St Andrews strives to provide a high quality education in a Christian context. We value a holistic approach, and encourage students to develop values that enrich the intellect, nurture the spirit, develop social responsibility and create healthy lifestyles.

Located on the southern end of the Gold Coast, St Andrews has beautiful views of the Tallebudgera Valley. Our modern campus is growing all the time, opening a brand new state of the art Library Resource Centre for the Middle and Senior School in 2009, a highly functional Multi-purpose Hall in the Junior School in 2010, and a superb Covered Outdoor Learning Area in 2012. In the middle of 2014 the College opened ‘The Learning Hub’, a learning space in the secondary school that makes a clear statement that learning is our core business. The Learning Hub in its design incorporates the best of formal and informal learning, of independent and collaborate learning, of ubiquitous anywhere, anytime learning, and of visible learning. As well as learning spaces ‘The Learning Hub’ also incorporates a new Tuckshop with indoor and outdoor eating areas for students to come together to eat and build their sense of belonging and connectedness.

Our Early Learning Centre offering Pre Prep and Junior Kindy opened at the start of 2015. With its well-equipped modern learning and play spaces for experiential and play-based learning the ELC provides stimulating and flexible opportunities to play, develop and learn that are second to none. It truly is a child-centred facility. In 2016 we have undertaken a total refurbishment of the Junior School including doubling the size of the library and the creation of a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Maths) room specifically for Junior School. In 2017 we have open a new Secondary School facility for music, dance and highly innovative Business Studies labs, as well as a 300+ seat Theatre.

St Andrews is a school that seeks to provide an environment where each person is valued and accepted as a child of God. Each is challenged to discover, develop and use their gifts and abilities for personal growth and service to others. We hope that the enriching and fulfilling opportunities experienced in our community stay with students for life.

Our three sub-schools: Junior School (Prep-Year 6); Middle School (Years 7-9); and Senior School (Years 10-12) means that teaching and learning is tailored to the developmental stage of students. The Junior School, using the International Baccalaureate’s Primary Years Program (PYP) as its framework places a strong emphasis on developing both the fundamentals of numeracy and literacy, as well as critical inquiry skills. Middle schooling methodology, covering a broad curriculum, is practised in Years 7, 8 and 9 to guide students through those early adolescent years. Encouraging students to take responsibility for learning enables them to move towards being independent learners in preparation for senior schooling. Senior School students select a pathway that reflects their academic and vocational needs. Information communication technologies are integrated across the curriculum for all year levels. Both the Middle and Senior School use the renowned teaching and learning framework known as Dimensions of Learning to facilitate a constant focus on student learning.

The staff of St Andrews are motivated by a genuine sense of helping each child realise his or her potential. As a learning community our staff are engaged in ongoing professional development and refinement of our programs to ensure that we are improving the quality of learning experiences available to our children and young people.

St Andrews is widely regarded as a caring school. We place a high priority on pastoral care. In recent times we have begun to implement Positive Psychology, an approach that seeks to proactively build well-being and resilience. Our staff work hard at developing nurturing relationships with students because encouraging and affirming relationships lie at the heart of effective learning.

At St Andrews we celebrate and share the “Good News” of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We see each student as a unique creation of God, as a person whom he loves and with whom he desires a relationship. Through regular worship and our P-12 Christian Studies programme we aim to provide students with a thorough understanding of Biblical Christianity and trust that the Holy Spirit will work faith in their lives. Christian teaching at the College is based on the doctrines of the Lutheran Church of Australia, although students from a variety of church and non-church backgrounds are welcomed into the community.

St Andrews is known as a community where people matter. No-one is lost in the crowd at St Andrews. Most of our enrolments come about through word of mouth: we are recommended by parents and students who, quite simply, love the College. Each staff member makes a special effort to know and care for the individual students in their charge. Staff do not follow a “one size fits all” approach but strive to develop individual pathways for students according to their particular interests and talents, especially in secondary school.

Because we believe that all useful knowledge and learning is a wonderful gift of God for our growth as human beings, we value academic excellence. We also recognise that each child has different but special gifts that need to be identified and developed to the fullest. Thus we provide a wide range of curricular and co-curricular activities at all levels and empower students to strive towards their own personal best in their chosen fields. In our classes, learning how to learn is emphasised so that young people have the skills to become lifelong and life-wide learners.