Loreto Mandeville Hall Toorak

To become confident, self-assured women, girls need the right challenges. Loreto Mandeville Hall Toorak has created an environment where your daughter will be nurtured, challenged and encouraged to be the best that she can be. Each year, Loreto Toorak presents its academic results with pride. But this is only one aspect of our holistic approach to education. Our shared focus is an authentic Loreto experience; providing our students with the challenges and opportunities they need to truly excel in life.

At Loreto, we believe that overcoming challenges can lead to incredible things. It is through these challenges that our school was born. Four hundred years ago, English woman Mary Ward faced extraordinary opposition to establish the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM) - also known as the Loreto Sisters. Click the link below to learn more about Mary Ward.

In Australia, the foundation was led by Mother Mary Gonzaga Barry ibvm, who in 1875, established Catholic primary and secondary schools in Ballarat. Today, there are seven Loreto Schools in Australia and over 90 throughout the rest of the world. Loreto Toorak was established in 1924, and continues this worldwide tradition. In each student, our goal is to foster the foundation for a strong and mature faith – in God, herself and in life. With these values, she will be equipped to embrace all the challenges, joys and the adventures that lie ahead in life.

The Mission and Vision of our school is clearly enunciated, in detail, in the Mission Statement Document, a foundational document of the philosophy of our School.  The Loreto Toorak Educational philosophy is values-based and framed around an equal commitment to Social Justice and Academic excellence and could be summarised thus This is our vision: that Loreto schools offer a Catholic education which liberates, empowers and motivates students to use their individual gifts with confidence, creativity and generosity in loving and responsible service.

Our goal is to foster in each student the foundation for a strong, mature faith – in God, in herself and in life. These foundations will provide a vibrant core of values and beliefs that will stand her in good stead to face and, indeed, to embrace all the challenges, the joys and the adventures that lie ahead in life. The tradition in which we stand is one that is proudly and confidently committed to an education of the whole child, both heart and mind, and based on a strong set of Loreto values. These lie at the heart of all our endeavours.

We embrace genuine values of freedom, justice, sincerity, verity and felicity. With these values, we foster a mutual respect and deep understanding of the individual, and a compassion for the broader community.  Living with sincerity was something Mary Ward always envisaged. Her ideal was that “we should be such as we appear and appear such as we are”.

Closely linked to sincerity is Mary Ward’s concept of verity. For Mary, this meant having integrity and truth, particularly the truth of who we are and what gives meaning to our lives - a truth that centres fundamentally on the mystery of God. Felicity is an attitude of mind, a disposition of the heart which manifests itself in cheerfulness, good humour, joy, happiness, hope, optimism, friendliness, courtesy, positive thinking, inner peace, self-acceptance and courage.

The qualities of freedom, justice and sincerity are at the core of Mary Ward’s spirit. Her understanding of freedom was grounded in her sense of personal relationship with God. Her belief was that each one of us, in our ordinary experience of life, has access to God’s loving care. This is the truth that sets us free. It is an inner freedom, accepting of self, open to others and trusting of life. Justice, as Mary Ward describes it, involves personal integrity based on a harmonious relationship with God, other people and with the whole of creation. It is expressed through “works of justice” that aspire to bring about such harmony.