Marist College Canberra

Marist schools in Australia

The origins of MCC are to be found at the Rocks in Sydney. There, in 1875, only three years after the foundation of the first MCC school in Australia, the Brothers began a Select School or High School with Brother Augustine McDonald as its first principal.

In 1887 the secondary school transferred to the eastern side of St Mary's Cathedral, since this was a more central location and provided more space. By 1910 however, the school premises were run down and this fact and other difficulties led the Marist Brothers to construct new buildings on the heights of Darlinghurst, and "The High School" as it was commonly known, transferred there. Both at the Cathedral and at Darlinghurst. By the 1960s, demographics threatened the future of the school at Darlinghurst, while at the same time Canberra was burgeoning had few Catholic schools. So the decision was taken to sell the property and to use the proceeds to transfer the school to Canberra.

Canberra

Marist College Canberra opened in 1968 with primary classes whilst construction of the secondary school building was still being completed. The first senior classes commenced in 1971. The first graduating class was in 1975.

Between 1976 and 1993 a teacher at Marist College, Brother Kostka Chute, sexually molested at least 39 students. The school investigated the first complaints concerning Chute's conduct internally, and permitted him to continue teaching. He was not removed from teaching duties until late 1993 when parents of one of his students complained to the ACT government. Chute was jailed in 2010 after being convicted on 19 counts of child sexual abuse. As of 2014 Marist College had paid almost $7 million in compensation to 38 former students who had been abused by Chute during his time at the school. In December 2015 the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found that the Marist Brothers had been aware of the allegations against Chute since the 1960s, but continued to transfer him between schools. It also noted that another teacher at Marist College, Brother Gregory Sutton, had molested students at the school during the early 1980s leading to eight compensation payments, but found that there was no evidence that either the Marist Brothers or the school had received allegations concerning Sutton during this period.

The Canberra Marist Brothers community was disbanded at the end of 2015. This did not affect the governance of the school, as it is now staffed by lay teachers and a lay principal.

Houses

The school's house system was implemented in 1986 from a year group system. Each house developed their own crest and motto. The original six houses were Conway, Crispin, Darlinghurst, Mark, Othmar, Patrick. In 1988, two further houses, Haydon and McMahon, were added to reduce house size.

Early in 2016, Othmar House was renamed Lavalla House. This change of name was requested by the school community, following adverse findings by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse of Brother Othmar's handling of the abuse of students at another school.

The Champagnat Cup was introduced by the graduating year of 2005. The cup is presented to the house that proves to have respectively won overall in an array of house competitions. These competitions include athletic, swimming and cross country carnivals, academic performance, community service hours and walkathon collection totals.

Sports

Marist is a member school of the Associated Southern Colleges (ASC). The College competes against other schools in this competition in a number of different sports, including hockey, athletics, cricket, rugby, swimming and cross country.