Founded 1982 | ||
Parents for Education (PARED) manages several schools in Sydney, Australia through the PARED Foundation, and was extended to Melbourne in 2016. PARED was established in 1982 by Opus Dei as an initiative of parents and educators to operate schools and other educational projects which assist parents in their task as the primary educators of their children.
The founders of the PARED Schools have introduced into Australia a system of education that was developed in Europe in the 1950s for the parents to exercise greater responsibility in the education of their children. PARED is associated with the Institute of Family Studies of the University of Navarre in Pamplona, Spain.
There are now many such schools in operation on five continents. As of 1993, there were over 150 such schools. PARED maintains contact with many of these schools.
PARED founded Tangara School for Girls in 1982. The school initially had two full-time teachers and 17 students. Since then several other schools and campuses have been established in Sydney's metropolitan region (in Cherrybrook, Dural, Wahroonga, Belfield, Orchard Hills, and Werrington), and in the Melbourne suburb of Narre Warren North.
These include Redfield College at Dural and Montgrove College. The schools have chaplains affiliated with Opus Dei.
PARED Schools are characterised by many features. Prominent among these are: One of the main means of parent/teacher/student communication is through the tutorial system. Each student is allotted a tutor who meets the student regularly (ideally fortnightly) to check on the student's advancement academically, socially, spiritually etc. The tutor may or may not be a qualified teacher and tends to keep tutees over a period of years. The tutor/parent meeting replaces parent/teacher interviews so it is important that the relationship between student, tutor and parent is copacetic to ensure it provides the intended value.