10 statistics about the impact of Christian schools on millennial graduates and Australia

School is more than just a place to acquire skills you need to then find employment and make an economic contribution to society. While these are important and necessary, education plays a broader role in preparing and shaping young people into the kinds of citizens who can enrich and benefit their neighbours, community and world.

The Cardus Education Survey Australia Project was one of the most comprehensive research projects of its kind, providing a more holistic perspective of graduates rather than the more familiar approaches of measuring only academic outcomes, economic contributions and career pathways of the individual.

Published in 2020, this report set out to measure how Australians ages 25 to 39 who graduated from secondary school between 1998 and 2011 – popularly named Millennials – contribute to the flourishing or “common good” of Australian communities. It explored the extent to which these contributions are evident many years after they graduated. 

Millennial graduates of Christian schools

The report highlighted the significant impact of Christian schools on graduates when it comes to belonging, volunteering, maintaining relationships and feeling a sense of purpose.

Compared with graduates from other schools, Millennial graduates of Christian schools are more likely to:

1. Feel prepared to find a sense of meaning, purpose and direction in life
2. Feel prepared to deal with personal relationships
3. Get married and remain married
4. Volunteer to help the elderly
5. Volunteer to care for the environment
6. Volunteer to care for the poor
7. Volunteer with a political organisation
8. Be an active member of a political party
9. Be an active member of a trade union
10. Be an active member of a church or religious organisation

As the report notes, schools play a key role in shaping students’ values and character, which can have lasting impacts on how they relate to others and engage in communities. However, it is not ‘schools’ but the teachers and staff at these schools who pass on these values in both word and by example. Many of these stories were powerfully shared at the Faith In Our Future events in 2024.

This is why it is so important that Christian schools can have a positive right to operate in accordance with their faith. When teachers like Ann are able to express their beliefs that God has come to serve us; we’ll see more students signing up to serve in their own communities.

Please write to your political representatives and ask them to ensure this positive right is provided for the future of faith in our schools.