For over 140 years, Columba Catholic College has offered an outstanding student experience, encouraging students to be the best they can be. Columba students more than attend. They form part of a community with a history that stretches back to the nineteenth century. With outstanding contemporary facilities across two campuses, extensive curriculum offerings focused on new connections, collaboration, entrepreneurial thinking, and a growth mindset. Students are well equipped to be the leaders and innovators of tomorrow.
Columba is a vibrant, affordable P-12 Catholic College catering to the full needs of families and students. Being co-educational, students can find their unique niche for learning and personal growth. With a kindergarten on site, run by Catholic Kindles, our educational setting gives families a seamless educational and cultural experience spanning across the early, middle, and senior years phases of learning. This P-12 setting gives students access to a wide range of subjects and opportunities matched to current and emerging pathways and occupations.
Columba Catholic College students have a sense of purpose. This purpose, of being the best they can be, drives them to grab the many opportunities available, to achieve a balance between their academic, social, spiritual, sports, and cultural pursuits.
Our College camping facility at Marybank, a 30-hectare property, ensures that the balance between academic rigors and time away in the great western outdoors features prominently in our purposeful curriculum and pastoral offerings.
Our twin boarding facilities on Mt Carmel Campus (for boys) and St Mary's Campus (for girls) ensure that both son's and daughters' residential needs are met with sensitivity to their particular circumstances. We are proud of our wrap-around program in boarding. Students enjoy structured weekend activities transport to sporting and work commitments and travel to and from Townsville by College bus for weekly boarders. This sense of family and service is a hallmark of the Columba border.
The three Catholic traditions that formed the College – the Christian Brothers Good Samaritan and Mercy sisters provide a model of how the Columba student treats one another and how students work hard to use their God-given gifts to betterment society. Each student is recognized as an individual, and we strive to come to know the real person inside each child as they grow, mature and develop. There is no blueprint for the "Columba student" - each child is different. We see our role as helping all of our students become the best they can be without compromising their personality's true nature.
Columba Catholic College is where children can confidently be themselves, growing in every way to become competent, confident, compassionate, and booming contributors to society. This is done in a safe, nurturing, and academically challenging environment with an extensive range of co-curricular opportunities.
Columba Catholic College has an enrolment of approximately 600 students.
The population of the College comprises students from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds. It includes students from rural Queensland, from regional centers of Queensland, interstate students of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent, and some in whose homes English is spoken only as a second language.
One of the ongoing challenges which the College is always endeavoring to meet is to find effective ways of meeting the range of academic needs of its students - the exceptionally gifted, those for whom learning is difficult, and the students of average ability for whom a creative approach to curriculum is no less necessary.
In keeping with the Mission Statement, teachers at Columba Catholic College are invited to see their vocation as a following of Christ, the ultimate teacher. In doing this, they will endeavor to provide a caring environment based on sincere relationships to help students internalize Christian values.
In the same spirit, the College will endeavor to provide the students with a sound, up-to-date curriculum that aims to develop each individual's potential in a range of areas, including academic excellence. Believing that the ideal process of education is a shared one and that faith is assimilated through contact with people whose daily life bears witness to it, the College invites parents, students, and staff to share the same basic Christian approach to life.
Charters Towers is a city of 10 000 people situated 135 km south-west of Townsville. The city has a long history of providing quality education to the Charters Towers community and families from across North Queensland.
In recent years, that provision has been available to people from a more comprehensive background, including overseas students. The city has several day and boarding schools, Catholic, Anglican and non-denominational, and State Primary and Secondary schools. The town's economy is otherwise built on mining (gold, in particular) and the beef industry.
In 1998, the three Catholic schools in Charters Towers amalgamated to form a single school, Columba Catholic College, operating from the three existing campuses. The new school comes under the authority of the Diocese of Townsville through the Catholic Education Office.
Columba Catholic College shares in the mission of Christ's Church to further the coming of God's reign of Justice, Peace, Compassion, and Redemption.
CCC shares the vision of an educational community, which:
- Is based on the teaching and example of Jesus Christ, as found in the Gospels and handed on in this community by the traditions of the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of the Good Samaritan, and the Christian Brothers
- Supports families and works in co-operation with parents in the total development of their children
- Exists primarily to provide for the needs of the students, recognizing the value and uniqueness of each person
- Offers quality education from Prep to Year 12, including Residential Care
- Fosters an atmosphere that is welcoming, safe, and supportive, with relationships at all levels based on self-respect and respect for others
- Nurtures the faith of all members through prayer, learning, and service to others.
- Encourages all members to take proper care of the environment in which they live so that all of creation will grow in the perfect fullness of God's plan
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