Enhancing Trustworthiness

Over the past week there has been a lot of commentary about the performance of Australian schools relative to other nations in the media. Learning conditions within Australian schools are often compared to those in Finland. One of the qualities of the Finnish education system is that of trust. Members of the Finnish community place a high level of trust in schools and teachers.

We all learn, perform and grow better where there is a culture of trust. At Pacific we operate in this way. We trust our students, parents, teachers and support staff to be to be working together and giving their best to enhance the quality of learning for our young people. Our staff and students are challenged to see their learning and work as a vocation where they are called to make the best use of their gifts in partnership together. 

In this culture, we grow our capacity to use a range of information and data to provide feed forward to teachers, students and parents so that the next steps of learning can be planned and taken. This culture of trust is grown from the Lutheran school values of humility, service, quality, courage, compassion, forgiveness, justice, hope, acceptance and love.  These values grow from faith in a loving and gracious God who blesses us abundantly with our daily needs, is with us in times of struggle and forgives us when we turn to Him in faith for forgiveness when we fall short. In this type of culture, there is a full focus on the wholeness of the humanity of each member of our community as special parts of God’s creation. This includes a celebration of gifts and strengths, calm restorative guidance when growth or change is required and a respect for the dignity of all.