A small school, built on big promises.
Since 1998, Nataniel Castle Academy has grown one classroom at a time — always with the same rule: every child, by name.
Where we come from.
We are a Christian pre-school and elementary school in Quezon City. What began as a single Nursery classroom in Teacher Lourdes' living room has become a K–6 campus of 460 pupils. The rooms are bigger now. The promise hasn't changed.
Nataniel Castle Academy was founded in 1998 by Dr. Maria Lourdes Castro-Villanueva, a Reading Specialist who believed early childhood education in the Philippines deserved warmth and rigor in equal measure. The school was named after her grandfather, a church deacon who taught her to read on Saturdays.
For our first decade we ran out of a converted home on Castle Street. Families helped build the sandbox, planted the mango tree that still shades the Kinder yard, and stayed when we moved to our current three-building campus in 2012.
Today we teach Nursery through Grade 6 under the DepEd curriculum, with a phonics-first literacy program, Singapore math, and a faith-and-values formation woven through every school day. We are small on purpose. Our classes cap at 24, and our teachers know every child's family.
Four pillars, lived daily.
"A school is not a building. It is the way grown-ups speak to children, the songs we sing at assembly, the silence we keep before we pray. At Nataniel Castle, we try to get all of that right — one little heart at a time."
Twenty-eight years, one school.
A brief timeline of how we got here.
The school begins
Nataniel Castle Academy opens its first Nursery classroom with 14 pupils in the home of founder Dr. Maria Lourdes Castro-Villanueva.
First kindergarten class
NCA adds Kinder 1 and Kinder 2; the founding class graduates Nursery and continues through the school.
Grade 6 added
The school completes the full K–6 elementary program, with its first Grade 6 graduation in 2007.
New campus on Castle Street
NCA moves from its founding home to a three-building campus; the mango tree from the original yard is transplanted.
Twentieth anniversary
The school celebrates 20 years with a homecoming weekend attended by 180 alumni.
Full return to in-person classes
After two years of distance learning, every NCA pupil returns to campus full-time.