Practical Questions

The question "what is a classical educaiton?" is very often followed by "what is your curriculum?"

Classical education is still a relatively unknown educational model in Australia, even though in countries such as the US there are thousands of schools dedicated to delivering this model to students. So what does a classical curriculum look like in our country?

All accredited schools in Australia are required to teach the Australian National Curriculum to students from Years Prep to Ten. As an accredited school in Queensland, we will be teaching students using a classical implementation of the Australian National Curriculum. This means that we will teach the nine required learning areas of English, Mathematics, Science, History and Social Studies (HaSS), The Arts, Health and Physical Education (HPE), Technology, and Language.

The good news is that the National Curriculum is broad and currently allows for a significant amount of freedom to interpret and implement it in the context of an individual school's philosophy and theology. That means integrated into all of the subjects at Newman College - as well as being taught as standalone skills and content - will be those learning areas that are distinct to a classical or liberal arts education: Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric (the Trivium), as well as Philosophy, Theology, History and Literature. We also teach a number of school-based subjects, including Classical Studies, Latin and Religion.

But a classical education is about so much more than curriculum - it is about the way we teach (pedagogy), the school culture we foster, and the very purpose of education itself.

You can read more about our curriculum on our dedicated page here:

Yes, our graduates will still qualify for mainstream university entrance in all subjects from medicine and midwifery to education and engineering. But whatever a student decides to pursue when they graduate from our school, our hope is that the education they have received at Newman College will give them more than just a QCE or an ATAR. Our mission is to cultivate in our students a set of attributes few schools talk about in today's world: wisdom, virtue and a love for what is True, Good and Beautiful. With St John Henry Newman, we are firmly of the belief that: 

"Though the useful is not always good, the good is always useful.”

So whatever their career or vocation, our hope is to deliver an education that best-equips a soul through this life and into eternity.

We want our classical Catholic education to be as accessible as possible to families that want it, so we're looking into the possibility of a bus to help families that live further away, particularly in the South West of Brisbane. Like a number of things in our opening years, such as Outside of School Hours Care, the availability of a bus will be contingent upon demand. If you are considering Newman College for your children and this is important to you, please get in touch today to let us know!

As part of our desire to make Newman College available to as many families as possible, we are committed to making our fees affordable. We have done our best to create an affordable fee structure with discounts for families with multiple children enrolled simultaneously. This means incremental discounts for your second and third child, and no tuition fees for the fourth child onwards!

You can find a detailed breakdown of our school fees on the dedicated web page here: