St Bede's College (Mentone)

School photo, c. 1930s (boarder's matron in white, seated)

The college was founded in 1938 at Mentone Beach, by the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, or De La Salle Order of Brothers, also known as The French Christian Brothers. The Brothers built the college overlooking Mentone Beach which opened in February, 1938. The Order had purchased a property which included a Victorian homestead, "the McCristal Estate", that had been used by Mentone Girls Grammar School since the early 1920s. From its inception, St Bede's was a day and boarding school. It is now a day school only.[1][2] It remains an independent school in the Catholic tradition with its administration still retained by the De La Salle Brothers.

The founder of the institute, St Jean-Baptiste de la Salle, was a French nobleman of the 17th century, who in the reign of Louis XIV renounced his titles and estates, and founded free schools for the rural and urban poor, who had not previously been afforded the opportunity of an education. He was the founder of the classroom model of education and of teacher training colleges, and established schools staffed by consecrated laymen who donated their labour in return for their keep; living a life of primitive communism under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. These men became the Fratres Scholarum Christianarum (FSC), or De La Salle Brothers, as they came to be known in the English-speaking world.

The school was named after St. Bede the Venerable, a 7th-century Benedictine monk and priest, who spent his life teaching and writing at Jarrow Abbey, and who was the first English historian, famous for his publication of Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

St Bede's attracts Catholic students from Mentone and surrounding suburbs as far south-east as the Mornington Peninsula. As a boarding school its bailiwick was statewide and encompassed southern New South Wales, and internationally from South-East Asia, the South Pacific and the expat community. Its ethos is that of an essentially middle class institution, with an emphasis on athleticism, religion, and discipline. It now comprises approximately 1600 day students.[2][3]

In 2016, the college's F1 in Schools team, Infinitude, set the World Record at the World Finals in Austin, Texas, in collaboration with Brighton Secondary School, Adelaide.[4]

Also in this same year, a team of students successfully won the Australian STEM Video Game Challenge in the Year 9-12 Gamemaker/Gamestar Mechanic category with their game Spectrum.[5]

• Br. Simon Staunton (1937–1938)
• Br. Julian Lennon (1939–1947)
• Br. Colman Molloy (1948–1952 and 1959–1965)
• Br. Finian Allman (1953–1957)
• Br. Stanislaus Carmody (1966–1967)
• Br. Peter McIntosh (1968–1973)
• Br. William Firman (1974–1987)
• Br. Kevin Moloney (1988)
• Br. Quentin O'Halloran (1989–1998)
• Br. Ken Ormerod (1999–2006)
• Br. Garry Coyte (2007–2017)
• Mr. John Finn (2018 -)

• Kilbreda College
• Mentone Girls Grammar
• List of non-government schools in Melbourne
• Catholic education in Australia

• St Bede's College website