2024 was another big year for SRE as we had to implement a new Department of Education Criminal Declaration for all teachers and helpers. We had to ensure all new teachers had completed this as part of their application process and ensure all current teachers and helpers had completed this by an October 31^st deadline. We were able to process all our people (approx. 480) by early September. 

2024 saw a record number of teachers step out of teaching SRE – around 110. This was mostly due to issue of age, health and changes in work arrangements with a small number transferring to other denominations. We are thankful for the service many of those teachers gave of many years. We are grateful too that we welcomed 70 new teachers who were authorised over the 12 months. 

At the start of 2025 we had some others not able to return to teach. Our current number of active teachers and helpers is around 430 with around 25 working through the authorisation process at time of writing this report. 

These numbers are concerning but certainly not unique to Baptist churches, with other denominations facing similar decline over recent years. This can be attributed to a few reasons – aging church demographics, changes in people’s availability due to work, health, and family constraints. Also, fewer churches are actively promoting and supporting SRE. 

ICCOREIS (the peak SRE body in NSW) has been working with Approved Providers like the Baptist Association to bring about additional resources for recruiting and promoting SRE, and we are excitedly anticipating Baptist churches around the state seeing ways in which people connect with the valuable ministry of SRE. We hope, therefore, to see an increase in people actively involved. 

We continue to provide a quality training course, not just for teachers from Baptist churches, but other denominations as well. Modes of training we offered in 2024, were on Zoom, online, and a couple of face-to-face opportunities. We continue to partner with ACC for our Zoom training. Across the three modes of training, we trained more than 120 new teachers and over 250 people requiring refresher/update training. 

In November we participated in the biannual SRE Parliamentary Celebration. Politicians from both major parties offered their support of SRE in public education and spoke of the value it brings to students and school communities. This helped counter the public push from a few areas to remove SRE from school time. 

Our small team continues to serve our SRE teachers through training, admin support and guidance. Frances continues to be an invaluable asset to our team administratively, supporting my role and freeing me up to focus on training, and supporting our teachers and coordinators, and maintain our online training course. 

Lysander continues to support our High School SRE teachers and serve on the High School working group which is a subcommittee of ICCOREIS. At only one day a week his role is limited, but he focuses, mainly on curriculum review and support as well as liaising with High School teachers and negotiating with schools when there are timetable issues to work through. 

We anticipate an increase in both SRE class sizes in 2025 as well as a push to reinstate SRE in schools that dropped SRE during the COVID period. ICCOREIS and providers are actively working with coordinators and teachers to strengthen on-the-ground relationships in schools. 

Please pray with us for SRE in 2025, that we see a return to strong numbers of teachers and new schools participating in SRE, especially in our regional areas. 

2023 saw a return to pre-Covid arrangements in schools and SRE operated without interruption in the broader sense. 

2023 saw around 65 Baptist SRE teachers either retire from teaching or move to other churches and continued their authorisation under a new Provider. We had 50 new teachers authorised, some returning after a break from teaching previously but mostly new recruits. As of the end of 2023 we had around 470 Baptist authorised SRE teachers which is only slightly down from the previous year’s total of 480.  

Training was strong across three modes of delivery. We had around 130 people access our online self-directed course and another 200 or so access training via Zoom and face-to-face. Many other denominations also access our training. We offer a great resource for Providers who don’t have the resources or staff to provide training for their teachers. We continue to partner with Australian Christian Churches in delivering our Essentials Training via Zoom. In 2022 we launched our Refresher Training which was widely accessed in 2023 as we aimed to streamline retraining requirements for current SRE teachers. 

Other training and support for SRE teachers and coordinators were offered through the Connect Days run in partnership across three teams in the Association: Children’s and Families, Youth Ministry and SRE. We offered professional development training for our coordinators via Zoom workshops and a Mental Health and Wellbeing Webinar which was run by Fiona Gardner, a member of the BYM team who is also a mental health trainer. 

Our small team of three continues to service our SRE teachers through training, admin support and guidance.  

Frances Schramko continues to be an invaluable asset to our team administratively, supporting my role and freeing me up to focus on training, and supporting our teachers and coordinators as well as maintaining our online training course. 

Lysander Lawrence continues to support our high school SRE teachers and serve on the High School Working Group which is a subcommittee of ICCOREIS. At only one day a week his role is limited, but he focuses mainly on curriculum review and support, as well as liaising with high school teachers and negotiating with schools when there are timetable issues to work through. 

Our teachers are doing amazing things in their local school communities bringing Jesus to a generation of children and young people who have little to no concept of who God is. We are facing increased opposition to SRE with many groups openly challenging the place SRE has in class time in schools. 2023 saw increased activity in this space and our teachers faced greater opposition than in the past.  

Other challenges include the increased requirements around compliance and keeping upskilled in training. This is a big ask for our mostly volunteer cohort of teachers. They are passionate about teaching SRE and persevere, but they would certainly value continued prayer and open support from their local churches and church leaders as they go into their local schools to teach each week. 

2023 also saw the implementation of a digital enrolment system across all public schools, with a number of issues in its roll out. If this is implemented well, we do anticipate our enrolment numbers will actually increase as parents have better ways to be informed that SRE is on offer in a school. 

I have confidence that 2024 will be an exciting year for SRE and we are looking forward to not just maintaining our current numbers but seeing many new people feel called to teach SRE and share Jesus with kids in their local community. We seek increased prayer coverage against opposition, asking God that doors which have been closed for a number of years will be reopened, and for opportunities to see SRE back in schools that haven’t had it for some time. We also seek the raising up of more people to fill the gaps, as we anticipate SRE numbers increasing after the Covid depletion and now with the completed roll out of the digital enrolment system expected mid-2024.