Grace Lutheran College

Academic

Grace Lutheran College currently enrols students in Years 7–12. Before 2008, the school only enrolled from year 8-12, however Year 7s were incorporated in 2008. This leaves years 7–9 as the middle school and 10–12 as the senior school. 2008 saw the completion of the Caboolture campus of Grace Lutheran College, currently enrolling year 7 to 12 students and was officially opened on 24 May 2008.

Each year, the college pays the entry fees for every one of its students to participate in the University of New South Wales academic competitions in Mathematics, Science, and English; each year the college manages to record a high number of awards for these. Subsequently, various departments allow students to enter academic competitions voluntarily, with the school paying the entry fees for the students to do so.

The college has a Performing Arts department. Each year, Performing Arts students have a variety of plays and productions as part of their course, usually, but not always, including junior and doing senior productions every second year. Every second year, the college also hosts a musical production, which is very popular within the community. Almost all of the production cast and crew are made up of students, with directing taken up by Performing Arts teachers.

Grace Lutheran College has an observatory consisting of a Celestron 14-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope attached to its science block. A 13 m radio telescope for monitoring solar activity is also at the Rothwell campus.

Uniform

Grace Lutheran College's uniforms fall under three main categories: formal, day and sports. The day or regular uniform is the uniform worn most days if a student does not have sport or requires to go on an excursion. For males, the uniform consists of long brown pants in winter, shorts in summer, with a white shirt with fine brown vertical stripes, with brown socks in winter, and cream socks with coloured striped at the top in summer, and polishable brown shoes. The female day uniform is a white dress with brown and green vertical stripes, with a four pronged 2 layered brown tie, with brown shoes and white socks. The girls also have the option of wearing their formal shirt with a white shirt with fine brown stripes for their day uniform, although not many do so. the Formal uniform for boys is a white shirt, with long brown pants, a brown tie, and for seniors a brown blazer. For girls, a brown skirt, a white shirt with the day uniform tie, light brown stockings and brown shoes are the formal uniform, with seniors able to wear a blazer also.

The sports uniform of Grace Lutheran College is varied. The normal sports uniform consists of brown shorts and a polo shirt that is mostly yellow with other colours. However, the uniform can change with seniority and sport. In Years 9–12, students participating in interschool sport have the opportunity to purchase a diamond-patterned sport shirt to indicate that they are a part of an interschool team. Students that do not wish to participate in interschool sport or have failed to make an interschool team play interhouse sport. The interhouse teams wear their house colours, either white (Pegasus), blue (Phoenix), green (Orion) or red (Antares). Year 12 students also have the opportunity to wear their senior jerseys during their sport day.

Years 9-12 have sport on Wednesday and Years 7 and 8 have theirs on Thursday, in order to play interschool sport with primary schools in the area. Approximately half of the school will be wearing day uniform and the other half will be wearing sports uniform, adding to the different uniforms already on display.

Outdoor education (Googa)

At Grace Lutheran College, students participate in a Christian Outdoor camp lasting four weeks. At Googa Outdoor Education Centre (Generally shortened to "Googa"), students are to live without electricity (with few exceptions), to make their own night time meals, to clean the cabins and live without technology. To achieve this aim, students are not allowed to have any electronic devices at the camp, such as mobile phones, iPods and other MP3 players, and other such devices, and learn many life survival skills by the experienced leaders.

Due to the camp only being capable of holding 48 students at any one time, students attend the camp in their house groups or join one of two combined groups, one of which attends in the last month of Year 9, and the other during the Easter school holidays. Googa was originally a forestry camp before being purchased by the school. The camp consists of six dormitories capable of holding 12 students each, as well as one other dormitory equipped for disabled students and other scenarios. It also has two composting toilet blocks and housing for staff that live on the camp. Googa has recently purchased an adjacent avocado farm, increasing the total area of the camp to more than 150 acres (0.6 km²). On this new farm it is planned for another campus to be built, almost identical to the current one, allowing for twice as many classes per year.

Cooking and cleaning is done by the students, with cooking done on wood fires. During the camp, students go on hikes and pioneering exercises. During pioneering students must build a shelter, toilet, chapel and other things required to live comfortably in the bush, out of only rope and wooden poles. The pioneering experience lasts for three to four days and the hike is typically three days long. Early in the last week of the camp, the students experience a 24-hour solo, where they spend a day and night on their own, reflecting on their time at the camp.

Various activities are also observed, such as a daily run through one of three running tracks, various team building exercises, orienteering, tree climbing, and a high ropes course.

Current developments

Grace Lutheran College is almost continually being expanded in order to accommodate the rising number of students. A large chapel has recently been completed, with the school spending nearly $4 million. The building features a large worship hall, cafe, fully functional media room. The chapel has been a long-term goal of the college since its opening, and began construction in October 2006 after a number of years of delays.

Agile Technology at Grace - BYOD

Grace Lutheran College has an Agile Technology Program (BYOD) that allows students free choice in the technology they to bring to campus. From 2016 it is expected that over 80% of students will bring a device of their choice to campus, empowering students to make their own decisions on what technology suits them to accomplish specific assessment tasks.

Robotics at Grace

Grace Lutheran College is a centre for Robotics. Grace is a hub for FIRST in Queensland. Grace Lutheran College hosts the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) competition for the Brisbane Bayside region as well as FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) for the state of Queensland. The Genesis Project was the first FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) robot to be developed in Queensland, its development took place in 2015.

Grace has one of the first purpose built Robotics teaching spaces in the Southern Hemisphere. The College uses these facilities to train teachers and students in STEM developments in the area of Robotics. Staff from institutions as far as the United States and South East Asia have visited Grace Lutheran College to learn about FIRST Robotics Programs. In 2016, Grace participated in the FRC again with their robot, Exodus.

Sport

The College promotes a variety of sports which includes Aussie Rules, Baseball, Basketball, Cricket, Futsal, Gaelic Football, Hockey, Netball, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Soccer, Softball, Squash, Tennis, Touch, Volleyball and Water Polo.

The College participates in the Moreton Bay and Caboolture district where it wins a large majority of competitions. After winning the district or zone final, the school has the chance to compete in Metropolitan finals, where it is the most successful school in QSS recorded history. Grace Lutheran College is the current metropolitan champion in:

The school has no excellence or scholarship program in place but has a history of succeeding in district and metropolitan finals and co-curricular competitions such as ISSA, Uhlsport Cup and Bill Turner Cup. Soccer achievements include for the girls the Uhlsport Cup in 2006, the ISSA Cup in 1996, 1997, 2000, 2002, 2006, 2011 and 2012 and the final 8 of the 2007 Bill Turner Cup. The boys have also made the semi-finals in both the Uhlsport Cup in 2008 and Bill Turner Cup in 2007. In 2007, student Robbie Buhmann was also named star player of the 2007 Bill Turner Cup, a nationwide competition.

Notable sporting alumni