St Bede’s College rector stands down
It’s a Catholic school in a secular world, but its outgoing rector says families are ‘‘banging down the door’’ to get in.
St Bede’s College’s Justin Boyle is stepping down after 21 years and says the Christchurch boys-only day and boarding school is as popular as ever and always at capacity.
St Bede’s was founded in 1911, and was still sometimes thought to be a private school, Boyle said.
‘‘It’s not. There are people from all walks of life who come to this school. The prerequisite is that they are Catholic.’’
Being a faith-based school was ‘‘in some ways counter-cultural’’ in a ‘‘very secular country’’, he said.
Families were ‘‘banging down the door’’ to get a place.
The school has a capped roll of 796 students and doesn’t usually have a waiting list as it’s rare to have any unallocated spaces, said Boyle.
A report in 2020 said about 8.5% of primary and secondary students in New Zealand attend the nation’s 237 Catholic schools, which equates to about 70,000 students.
As well as being St Bede’s College’s longest serving rector, Boyle, 63, was the school’s first lay (non-priest) rector. His tenure there followed a successful cricket career, playing for Wellington and Canterbury in the 1980s.
Boyle said the most obvious change during his tenure was the number of students with complex learning or wellbeing needs, compared to even 10 or 15 years ago.
The school’s response included establishing a Centre of Wellbeing and employing two psychologists to support students.
Catholicism heavily informs school life, with students doing religious studies every day – or as Boyle put it, ‘‘learning about a guy who lived 2000 years ago, Jesus Christ’’.
‘‘We take them to the chapel, we may talk about some of the prayers of the church and what they mean.
‘‘We also talk to the boys about how we treat other people. We ask them about how honest they have been. It is important we give young people the skills to self-reflect, and we do this in the context of the special character’’.
Boyle was born in Christchurch and began his career as an English teacher in 1982. He went on to teach at Burnside HS and Christchurch Boys’ HS and then was appointed rector of St Kevin’s College in Oamaru from 1996 to 2001.
He leaves his role at St Bede’s at the end of the year and will take up a new leadership position within the Society of Mary, the Catholic organisation that owns St Bede’s and has seven other colleges in its network.
Boyle said the decision to vacate the role after more than two decades was a ‘‘natural one’’.
‘‘People close to me said ‘what’s next?’ And I started thinking about it.’’
Leaving the school also means finding a new place to live. Boyle and wife Genevieve have lived on site for the past 18 years, raising their four children on the grounds.