City Impact Church School

As a parent, I entrusted my two children—both highly sensitive and emotionally perceptive—to this Christian school with the belief that a faith-based institution would uphold love, care, and respect at its core. I assumed that educators who interact with hundreds of children over the years would naturally understand that some children are more sensitive than others, and that even the most resilient child goes through emotionally vulnerable stages. Unfortunately, our experience revealed a system that neither saw nor honored this reality.
From what we observed, the school’s overall educational approach was rigid, standardized, and reward-punishment based—more like training animals than nurturing human beings. Children were regularly given chocolates or lollies as rewards for compliance and punished for misbehavior. My daughter, being sensitive, became extremely anxious witnessing this system. She followed instructions not because she understood or agreed, but because she was afraid of being punished. This led to daily emotional distress—she was afraid to go to school, resisted getting dressed, refused to get out of the car, and showed physical symptoms like skin rashes and shortness of breath. We sought medical help, but nothing was physically wrong. Eventually, a child psychologist confirmed that her physical symptoms were somatic responses to anxiety.
What’s more heartbreaking is that she didn’t yet have the language to explain this. She would only say “I’m scared of going to school.” It wasn’t until much later that we understood the depth of her suffering. Even now, years after leaving the school (after just one term), she still has lingering trauma responses to anything school-related—her backpack, uniforms, even the mention of teachers. She continues to work with therapists and natural health practitioners to heal from what happened during those months.
One of her teachers once told me directly that what my daughter “needed was practice”—not support, not understanding, but repetition and compliance. There was no room for honoring each child’s pace or individual emotional needs. There was no curiosity about what might be causing a child’s hesitation, anxiety, or sadness—only a fixation on “getting them to do what they’re supposed to do.”
My son, too, struggled. The principal repeatedly scolded him and pressured him to follow rules without any sensitivity to his shyness or emotional state. For example, when my son felt too nervous to greet him, the principal insisted he must say hello before being allowed to leave, ignoring the fear and discomfort it caused. What I saw was a man who valued rules over people, obedience over relationship. His actions taught my son, consciously or not, that “your feelings don’t matter—only the rules do.”
This is especially damaging for children who are in the process of forming their self-worth. When a child is consistently told—directly or indirectly—that their feelings and needs are not important, they internalize the message that they themselves are not important.
As a Christian school, the values it teaches—love, compassion, respect—should be visible not only in Bible lessons and chapel songs, but in daily human interactions. And yet, we saw very little love in action. When a child showed signs of emotional struggle, the response was not empathy or support, but denial, control, and pressure to conform. The focus remained entirely on performance, behavior, and academic success. In such an environment, what children absorb is fear, competition, and the belief that “my worth lies only in my achievement.”
Writing this review was actually my children’s idea. They have both worked hard—and suffered much—on their path to healing from the emotional wounds they experienced here. They wanted to speak up not only to release their own pain, but to protect others—especially other sensitive children like themselves—from going through similar harm.
As parents, we support their decision. This review is not written out of anger, but from a place of care and responsibility. We hope that families considering this school will reflect carefully, especially if their children are emotionally sensitive or require a nurturing environment. Please look beyond appearances. A school may teach about love, but if it does not live it in its culture, its impact on children can be deeply damaging.

We absolutely LOVE City Impact Church School. The school is an EXCELLENT place for children to learn and thrive. We have 3 children currently in the school and we are very grateful for the wonderful teachers and leadership team who genuinely care about not only our children's academic success, but also their emotional, physical and spiritual growth. Highly recommend.

The school looks after their children like their own, principle and teachers pay attention to children's wellbeing. Academy wise is compatible to other schools. My child is now a more confident, spiritually mature young adult, the school cultivate their children into more responsible individual for young. Highly recommended.

I attended this school from year 0-12. Although this environment will be spoken about as safe nurturing and encouraging this is not the case. The school has never managed to increase its numbers much past 200, the reason for this is due to their issues which they do very well in concealing.

There is pervasive bullying at this school, even though they would never admit it. There is much more going on behind these doors that are not spoken about and never addressed. Their Christian teaching unfortunately had the ability to make children feel quite bad for any problems they were facing. Poor mental or emotional health, oh you must not be praying enough. Experiencing burnout, you must not be spending enough time with God. These underlying teaching can be exceptionally dangerous for children and families long term. Students in my class who faced these issues believed it was their fault or their sin, not because they were over worked. There were a number of children who were struggling with suicidal thoughts, abuse, and poor emotional health. This was never spoken about at school no one knew what these problems were and no child was every encouraged to seek professional help but rather talk to a youth pastor or just pray for it.
The workload of this school is something parents and students should be prepared for. In year 11 I was required to do 3-4 hours of school work and study each evening. In the school holidays I was required to do 40 hours a week of homework and study (especially for exams). We were told if we got behind it was impossible to catch up. Any students that were behind in art by 1/2 way through the year were encouraged to drop the subject to avoid the school looking bad and receiving bad marks. Before exams we were reminded of the schools impeccable exam averages and we better not be the ones to bring that down... Super encouraging to hear right before an important exam. Each of these things were said to be directly by the principal.

I had some amazing encouraging teachers at the school who I know what have done anything to help me succeed. The Principal, his wife and the head pastor are the only people I hold resentment towards. The way they have treated children and the words they have spoken will leave deep scars on many of the children, including myself, who went through the school.

Many ex-students including myself have made formal complaints to the school which they brush off easily as they believe they are 'still achieving a higher purpose' who cares if a couple of kids get hurt along the way. The trauma experience at this school will leave a mark on many children for the rest of their lives.