DR Doug Ashleigh believes the best part about his past seven years of work as Brisbane Catholic Education’s deputy executive director has been visiting schools and working with teachers in their classrooms.
“It’s the ultimate highlight,” he said, reflecting on his experiences inside more than 140 BCE primary and secondary schools across South East Queensland.
Dr Ashleigh is heading back to Newcastle in New South Wales to be close to family and especially spend time with four grandchildren.
He also intends to set up an education consultancy in 2023.
After the challenges of COVID lockdowns and restrictions, Dr Ashleigh is full of praise for the work of BCE teachers.
He points to great levels of teacher consistency in classrooms and says there’s a common language around learning.
“There’s also a great level of consistency and passion around Catholic identity in our schools,” Dr Ashleigh said.
“And one thing I do feel that we’ve done well has been our student ministry work engaging high school and late primary school students.”
For many people, Dr Ashleigh said the main experience of Church was now through schools.
He describes as “best in field” a Year 6 program developed to engage students in Christian ministry.
“We have a great responsibility in ensuring that the formation of our staff is appropriate to allow our schools to continue to be thriving and flourishing with Catholic identity,” he said.
“Words like compassion, mercy, stewardship are proudly part of our DNA and centred around a Gospel belief. I see that day in, day out in our schools.”
Dr Ashleigh is pleased to see strategies that he has helped develop come to fruition in BCE classrooms.
“We probably have the best network connectivity across all of our schools, which is something to be really proud of, because so much of schooling now relies on a really strong network,” he said.
A strong network connectivity allowed BCE to maintain high standards of learning during COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions.
Dr Ashleigh said one of the growing challenges facing Australian Catholic schools was attracting the best staff.
However he believes BCE is well placed because of its “enormous goodwill” and “openness to new thinking and ideas”.
“My biggest takeaway from BCE are the wonderful relationships and the people in our schools – just so deeply committed,” he said.
Dr Ashleigh said another outstanding feature of BCE schools was a commitment to “ecological conversion”.
“We’re very serious about the call in (Pope Francis’ encyclical) Laudato Si’ to protect our world. Sustainability and stewardship are front and centre in that,” he said.
“In our building design now it’s one of the key drivers that reflect the belief in and model effective use of natural resources.”
As well as building schools that made best use of sun and wind resources, Dr Ashleigh said ecological conversion meant fostering practices that were sustainable.
“Young people demand it. One of the big issues that students raise is that they’re concerned about the environment and global warming,” he said.
“With all the challenges around flooding and excessive temperatures, they are our greatest judge, they’re the ones that now come in and have an expectation because they are more aware of it than ever before.
“So we are absolutely committed to it.”
So what was Doug Ashleigh’s proudest moment during his time as deputy executive director at BCE?
“I was national chair of the STEM MAD (Making A Difference) student showcase which goes right across Australia for the last couple of years,” he said.
“BCE has done exceptionally well in it. We’ve won the major national awards in both years for secondary and primary STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education.”
He singled out Albany Creek All Saints’ primary school as “the most successful primary school” in the nationwide STEM MAD showcase.
Another highlight for Dr Ashleigh was working closely with Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge, whom he rates as an outstanding pastoral leader.
“When I was acting executive director he was really supportive of me,” he said.
“I do find him inspirational, particularly when he is passionate about something.”
Dr Ashleigh’s successor as BCE’s deputy executive director will be Diarmuid O’Riordan, principal at St Edmund’s College, Ipswich, for the past five years and a former deputy executive director in Cairns Catholic Education Services.
