Mountains Christian Academy (MCA) was an

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non-denominational Christian Non-denominational Christianity (or nondenominational Christianity) consists of churches, and individual Christians, which typically distance themselves from the confessionalism or creedalism of other Christian communities by not formally aligni ...

co-educational Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to ...

early learning,

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and secondary

day school A day school — as opposed to a boarding school — is an educational institution where children are given instruction during the day, after which the students return to their homes. A day school has full-day programs when compared to a regular s ...

, located in , in the Blue Mountains region of

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, Australia.

Overview

The school was affiliated with the Covenant Evangelical Church. This church was founded by

Howard Carter Howard Carter (9 May 18742 March 1939) was a British archaeologist and Egyptology, Egyptologist who Discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, discovered Tomb of Tutankhamun, the intact tomb of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, 18th Dynasty Pharaoh ...

in the mid-1980s, and the school was started to educate the children of the church. It originally began as a high school in 1976 and eventually included kindergarten and primary when there were enough children. It followed an education system known as

Accelerated Christian Education Accelerated Christian Education (also known as School of Tomorrow) is an American company which produces the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE, styled by the company as A.C.E.) school curriculum structured and based around a literal interpret ...

(ACE), which came from the

United States of America The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguo ...

. MCA was one of the first schools in Australia to implement this system of education, closer to a homeschool academy than to the familiar type of church school. Although MCA itself was a short-lived institution, it was the testing ground for a new educational paradigm that took off very rapidly. The swift success of this new style of education caused uncertainty and disquiet among Australian educationalists. At MCA,

Logos Foundation (Australia) The Logos Foundation was an influential and controversial Christian ministry that flourished in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s under the leadership of Howard Carter, originally a Baptist pastor from Auckland, New Zealand. Logos Foundation was in ...

introduced a type of education which offered an inexpensive, locally controlled alternative to state-run schools but was "criticised for religious, racial and community segregation", and the early-1980s saw intensifying conflicts between the ACE and government schools systems. The Academy closed in 1988 when the Covenant Evangelical Church and Logos Foundation (the CEC's political and educational arm) moved their headquarters to

Toowoomba Toowoomba ( ), nicknamed 'The Garden City' and 'T-Bar', is a city on the border of South East Queensland and Darling Downs regions of Queensland, Australia. It is located west of Queensland's capital, Brisbane. The urban population of Toowoom ...

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. The curriculum and culture of The Academy was eventually duplicated by Logos at Toowoomba Christian College.

References

External links

ACE Official Website

Guardian article 27 August 2005 about ACE in the UK.] {{Nondenominational Christian schools in Australia, state=autocollapse Nondenominational Christian schools in New South Wales Defunct schools in New South Wales Defunct secondary schools in New South Wales 1980s establishments in Australia 1988 disestablishments in Australia