Friday, 1 May 2026

The 2026 Leadership Symposium brings together Teaching School directors, principals, mentors, tertiary partners, and system leaders to unite around a shared vision for forming the next generation of Christian teachers through the way of love. Participants will consider how Christ-like love, patient, humble, truthful, and enduring, can shape leadership, strengthen partnerships, and foster communities where staff and trainees flourish. Keynotes, panels, and guided reflections will explore the transformative impact of leading from the heart.

Throughout the day, collaborative conversations will illuminate the interconnected layers of the Teaching Schools ecosystem and the opportunities these relationships create. Rather than viewing complexity as something to manage, the Symposium frames it as a space for generosity, clarity, and shared purpose, where love fosters alignment, communication, and mutual encouragement. Together, leaders will discern practical pathways for nurturing communities marked by trust, hospitality, and unity in mission, leaving renewed in their calling to lead with wisdom, grace, and steadfast love.

What is education actually for? And what difference should one’s faith make? In this keynote, leaders are invited to explore what’s love got to do with everyday teaching and learning, especially how we reimagine curricular requirements. Working in Christian Schools can easily become much the same as everyday Australian education, keeping the schooling machine rolling on and teaching what feels like secular content in subjects that are nervous about faith-based talk and promise autonomy and control. And yet we know that biblical wisdom applies to all of life, with no sacred–secular divide as this whole cosmos was birthed in, and exists for, love. This keynote will unpack what ‘God’s Curriculum’ looks like when reframed as an epic trek emerging from and for love, that orients every activity at your college toward holistic flourishing. It promises to help teachers and students alike make sense of the world in their schooling experience, fitting how God made us for shalom.

Dr Dave Benson – Executive Director, Associated Christian Schools (QLD)

In this keynote, Chris Rayner will explore how a leadership posture grounded in Christlike love—expressed through attentive listening, relational wisdom, and servant‑hearted presence—reshapes the way schools approach mentoring, coaching, and supervision. Drawing on evidence‑informed practices and a biblical vision for formational relationships, Chris will invite leaders to consider how their structures, habits, and everyday interactions can cultivate cultures of trust, professional growth, and genuine flourishing. This session will equip leaders to build mentoring ecosystems that are not only pedagogically effective, but deeply life‑giving, sustaining communities where emerging teachers experience the love of Christ embodied through wise guidance, shared learning, and covenantal care.

Chris Rayner - Senior Lecturer, National Institute for Christian Education and Honorary Associate, Alphacrucis University College.