There is a heritage-listed sandstone house on Old Northern Road in Castle Hill, built around 1844, that most people drive past without a second thought. It is called Castle Hill House, and for the last several years it has served as a vocational campus for Redeemer Baptist School. The restoration was done largely by hand — by church congregation members, the school says, logging more than 120,000 volunteer hours. It’s an impressive number. It also raises questions that the financial reports sitting on the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission’s database can’t quite answer on their own.
Redeemer Baptist School has operated out of North Parramatta since 1981, founded during a wave of Christian community schooling that swept through Australia in the mid-1970s. Families from the Redeemer Baptist Church gave up careers in business and education to build both the church and the school from the ground up. The school is named, indirectly, after the Church of the Redeemer in Houston — an Episcopal congregation that apparently influenced the theology and culture that took root in Sydney’s western suburbs. It now has over 400 students and sits on a 10-hectare main campus.
On paper, the financial story is one of quiet, sustained growth. Total revenue climbed from around $7.68 million in 2015 to $17.77 million by 2025 — a rise of roughly 131 percent over a decade. The school recorded a surplus in every single year across that period. By the end of 2025, total equity had reached $41.35 million. For an institution that describes itself as a not-for-profit operating a ministry, those are striking numbers. Government grants accounted for somewhere between 47 and 49 percent of total revenue across every year in the period — growing from $3.6 million to $8.64 million. Nearly half of what keeps this school running comes from public money.
What makes the governance structure worth examining is not any single detail, but the cumulative picture it presents. The same five directors appear in every annual report from 2015 to 2025. Those same five people simultaneously serve as directors of Redeemer Baptist Church Property Limited, Redeemer Baptist Services Limited, and Redeemer Community Aid Limited. The school’s stated long-term objective, as recorded in its own Directors’ Reports, is not primarily educational.
It is “to provide a stable corporate vehicle that enables Christian ministry through volunteer members of the Redeemer Baptist Church Ministry Order.” That is a direct quote from documents lodged with a federal regulator. It’s possible that language reflects an honest theological framing. It’s also possible it tells you something about which institution is actually running things.
The school’s history carries a harder chapter. In late 2004, twenty-eight congregation members left together, including a dozen teachers. What followed was a prolonged period of public scrutiny. Former members alleged that church leader Noel Cannon exercised control over their careers, marriages, family relationships, and housing. Alan Nutt, one of the church’s founding elders, spoke publicly about what he called systematic efforts to make young members distrust their own families. The group denied being a cult. In March 2005, Channel Nine’s Sunday program broadcast an investigation titled “Unholy Devotion.” Baptist minister Tim Costello backed the former members’ account, describing the organisation as, in his view, functionally a cult. These are serious words from a respected public figure. They don’t disappear simply because the school disputed them.
The wages allegations that emerged from the same period were specific and documented. Former members claimed some teachers had been paid as little as $11,000 a year — a fraction of the award wage — and that fourteen teachers were collectively owed around $6 million in unpaid wages. A Parramatta accountant helped former staff put numbers to their claims. The school called the allegations unfounded. It’s still unclear, publicly at least, how or whether those claims were ever fully resolved.
Redeemer Baptist School is also listed on the Australian National Redress Scheme register — an institution established following the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Inclusion on that register does not constitute a finding of liability, and it would be unfair to suggest otherwise. But it is a fact that belongs in any complete account of the institution.
There’s a sense, looking at all of this together, that Redeemer Baptist School exists in a space that is difficult to categorise neatly. It is a functioning school with real students and real teachers. It has a substantial property portfolio and a healthy balance sheet. It has also carried serious, unresolved allegations for over two decades. The Castle Hill sandstone house is truly amazing, having been restored by volunteers who donated over 120,000 hours of their time. The financial reports don’t address the reasons behind that devotion or the circumstances surrounding its offer.
