The Australian government allows the teaching of Buddhism under the legal provisions to teach religious instruction in government schools within the school timetables.  BESS provides a service to schools which choose to teach Buddhism as part of religious instruction. The services provided by BESS includes the coordination of a teachers' service by providing books, teaching materials and equipment to the schools, the teachers and students, and in many other ways both directly and indirectly. Individual temples provide the teachers and BESS helps in training teachers of Buddhism.

Each school makes an independent decision to teach Buddhism, and that decision is based on sufficient interest shown by parents. BESS provides every interested school the text for the school newsletter inviting consent letters from parents. BESS also provides translations in languages other than English when the school ascertains such needs. Currently translations in Mandarin, Vietnamese, Thai and Japanese are available. The school also makes room for a half an hour class per week for students following Buddhism. Supervision of teachers is a responsibility of the school.

It is important to note that parents need not be a Buddhist to give consent to the child to attend classes.

BESS provides the syllabus and curriculum, lesson titles and actual model lessons (not all lessons are ready as yet) to assist teachers and the schools. Where several teachers teach in one school, a senior teacher is engaged by BESS to coordinate the work of the many teachers.

To view  the Constitution document of BESS, please click here .

Through regular meetings of teachers attended by the management of BESS, a continuous effort is made to solve problems and to optimize the needs of each school and each teacher. A policy has been adopted by BESS to pay a travel subsidy to teachers.

The Buddhist Teachers Training Academy set up and run by BESS looks after the training needs of teachers as well as other volunteers helping BESS.

BESS will be very pleased to communicate with prospective teachers, teacher aides, or seminar presenters to provide more information.

All teachers and helpers are volunteers. While it is reasonable to reimburse out of pocket expenses incurred by teachers in particular, that is not possible until BESS is in a sound financial position. 

For information regarding donations, please click here . Past donations included audio visual material and equipment, books and other resource materials. Services such as photo-copying have also been donated.