Loreto College, Marryatville

Welcome to Loreto College Marryatville, South Australia’s leading all-girls day and boarding school, catering for students from Early Learning to Year 12. The College was established in 1905 and is set on beautiful heritage grounds, located in Marryatville, an inner-eastern suburb of Adelaide.

Being one of seven Australian Loreto Schools united by the vision of Mary Ward, the College prides itself on the development of strong, passionate and confident girls and young women who have the social consciousness to make a difference to our world.

A Loreto education is built from a 400-year-old foundation that articulates the importance of educating girls and young women so that they will actively take a place in society and influence their world through a set of strong values and beliefs. In delivering this view, Loreto College Marryatville provides girls with a well-rounded education where students are presented with a broad range of opportunities and given the support and encouragement needed so that they become confident and engaged learners.

Loreto has a strong reputation as an outstanding girls' school due to our history of academic and sporting success. Loreto girls have a long and steady tradition of State and National achievement in a range of curriculum areas producing two of South Australia’s Rhodes Scholars and one Schwarzman Scholar. Likewise, our girls have represented Loreto at a State and National level in a wide variety of individual and team sports. This success is made possible by our dedicated staff who work with the girls in achieving their personal best.

The Australian Curriculum is the Reception to Year 10 curriculum framework for schools in South Australia and sets the expectations for what students are taught across the various learning areas; English, Mathematics, Science, Humanities and Social Sciences, The Arts, Technologies, Health and Physical Education, and Languages.

A rich, and multi-dimensional framework, the Australian Curriculum provides teaching staff with the flexibility to design interdisciplinary, inquiry-based learning opportunities that allow our students to experience a world beyond their own.

In addition to the Australian Curriculum, learning at Loreto is also informed by the Keeping Safe: Child Protection Curriculum, the Crossway Catholic Education curriculum and The Made in the Image of God Human Sexuality Education program for SA Catholic Schools.

Students in the Senior Years will complete the South Australian Certificate of Education. The South Australian Certificate of Education (SACE) is an internationally recognised qualification that provides a variety of study options for students, with the flexibility to find an ideal pathway to post-secondary education.

We invite you to visit Loreto College, take a tour of our school, and meet the students, teachers, and community that make our school one of the top private girls’ schools in Adelaide. Spanning more than 400 years, the Loreto education tradition was first inspired by the foundress of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM), Mary Ward, and established in the Australian context by Gonzaga Barry IBVM in the late 19th Century.

Mary Ward was an inspirational leader, believing passionately that "women, in time to come, will do much" and that a strong education focused on girls and women would create "seekers of truth and doers of justice" to take action to improve the world for others.

Loreto schools encapsulate the beliefs and spirit of Mary Ward in delivering an education which inspires strong, passionate and confident girls and young women. Is it these characteristics that you can see most clearly in our girls and is what differentiates us from other schools.

All Loreto schools in Australia share the same set of values: freedom, justice, sincerity, verity and felicity. These values are at the heart of our educational philosophy and shape our identity as a school. Mary Ward’s understanding of freedom flowed from her personal relationship with God and her belief that each one of us, in our ordinary experience of life, has access to God's loving care. This is the truth that set us free. It is an inner freedom; an acceptance of self, an openness to and with others, and a trust in life.

Justice, as Mary Ward describes, involves personal integrity based on harmonious relationships with God, with other people and with the whole of creation. It is expressed in "works of justice", in active participation in the struggle to bring about such harmony. We are challenged "to be seekers of truth and doers of justice". Sincerity is our communication and relationship with others – an essential characteristic of the personal integrity Mary Ward 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 her it means integrity and truth, particularly the profound truth of who we are and what gives meaning to our lives, a truth that centres fundamentally on the gift of life and 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.

From Early Learning to the Senior Years, a Loreto education is encompassed by the values of Freedom, Justice, Sincerity, Verity and Felicity. These values reflect and shape the underlying culture of the College and ensure that our focus is always on the development of compassionate, kind, respectful, and positive individuals who believe in and practise Christian values.

Having an open mind and heart ensures that students of Loreto are always tolerant and empathetic towards others. Such an approach ensures students become responsible and ethical citizens who will shape their future world for the betterment of themselves and society.

Loreto students are essentially strong, passionate and confident. These outcomes are facilitated through targeted and systematic approaches aimed at enriching the individual. For children to flourish, they must be provided with a supportive environment, both pastorally and academically, where they feel challenged to strive for their best.

We look forward to welcoming you to our College and accompanying you as you journey through the process of learning more about what it means to have a Loreto education to becoming part of our Loreto family.