In the early 1990s, the Exclusive Brethren – now called the Plymouth Brethren Christian church – set up its own private schooling system.
Now known as the OneSchool Global network, the Brethren schools have 120 campuses across 20 countries teaching almost 10,000 children. In Australia, the schools operate in six states with 31 separate campuses serving their followers.
The Australian schools have benefited from generous taxpayer support – more than $130m in taxpayer funds has flowed to them in the past five years, in line with the commonwealth funding arrangements for non-government schools.
But little is known about the culture within these institutions.
A Guardian Australia investigation has sought to find out what is happening behind the gates of the OneSchool Global schools, to question whether the Australian taxpayer should be directly supporting an ethos that appears at odds with many of the values of modern Australia.
This question is particularly relevant at a time when public, secular schools are so desperately in need of funds.
The investigation has uncovered a culture in which the education of students is tightly controlled and monitored. Former OneSchool Global teachers told Guardian Australia that studies are restricted and many books are banned. Students are discouraged from attending university.
Former staff and students report concerns about child welfare and a culture of surveillance that they say intrudes on the lives of students even when they are not at school.
They say the church is intimately involved in most aspects of school life, with each campus linked to a trust controlled by male members of the Brethren community.
The notoriously secret Brethren sect is led by the Sydney-based accountant Bruce Hales, a millionaire who is known as the church’s “Elect Vessel” and “Man of God”.
Earlier this year Hales declared that “the devil is trying to get into our schools” as he urged his followers not to take the OneSchool Global network for granted.
In a ministry message given by Hales in the US in March, published in the sect’s so-called “white books” and seen by the Guardian, Hales says members should value the importance of impressions “early in our lives”.
“It will hold us, hold us against the power of the world, it will hold us against the power of worldly persons,” Hales said.
“Our children, in the main, generally go to schools that we try and run. The devil is against them,” Hales said, according to the ministry.
“We have to be very watchful in regard of our schooling, take nothing for granted. As soon as we take something for granted, the devil has already got a hold.”
