About Wollemi

Headmaster's Welcome

Wollemi College is an extraordinary place. Do not measure our College by its expansive grounds, the commitment of parents and staff, our NAPLAN record or even by the impressive HSC results of its first graduates in 2011. All these things are true but our College has far more to offer than all this.

The education we offer is based on expertise in the classroom, unity between parents and teachers, idealism and generosity in families, the best of support for parents, understanding of character education, and most of all, on the inestimable advantage of having Our Lord with us in the Blessed Sacrament in the College Chapel.

Wollemi is also the newest school of the PARED (Parents for Education) Foundation. Tangara School for Girls and Redfield College, the first PARED schools, are well known as centres of high academic achievement, of expertise in character education, and of vibrant Catholicism. We draw a substantial intake from the other PARED school in Sydney's west, Montgrove College in Orchard Hills.

We have sought to provide a most comprehensive view of the College through this website, but a walk around in person is always better. Please come along for one of our Open Days. They are scheduled each term.

What a terrific school you will find.

James Ramos
Wollemi College Headmaster



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Our Core Principles

A Unique System of Education

Wollemi recognises that parents are the most important educators in a child's life and that a school's role is to contribute to their education with impactful teachers and a sound academic curriculum. By providing teachers who not only teach an array of subjects but take an interest in their student's life outside of the classroom — through co-curricular activities, spiritual life, relationships, and good habits — Wollemi College promises an education that focuses on the specific strengths and weaknesses of your son.

Our unique mentoring system ensures that parents take a front-row seat in observing and nurturing the development of their son. Working with a school mentor, all parents have an insight into the particular goals set for their son at school, and can effectively reinforce them at home, giving them every chance to reach new heights.

Keeping home and school united through close communication, regular support for parents, and a strong community amongst families, you and your family have every shot at achieving your main task: to raise your son into a man of strong character.

Wollemi College Mission Statement

Wollemi College works with parents in their role as primary educators to develop men of character. We challenge our students to make a difference in society through their pursuit of personal and academic excellence and a life of faith


Wollemi College grew out of Orchard Hills Preparatory School, an infants school founded in 1999 by a group of parents and teachers who make up The PARED Foundation (Parents for Education). Orchard Hills Preparatory School has developed into Montgrove College, our sister school, a school for girls, with co-education offered in the infant years.

By 2004, Wollemi College began operating as an independent school for boys from Year 2-12, located on 10 hectares in Werrington, in Sydney's west, and receiving boys from Montgrove Infants who start at the College in Year 2. Their transition into Year 2 at the Wollemi campus is made smooth thanks to the ongoing close relationship with our sister school.

Wollemi College is the newest of the four schools of The PARED Foundation in Sydney, all of which offer personalised education, working in partnership with parents to raise children in good virtues and academic excellence.

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Our aim at Wollemi College is to provide a school that works closely with parents, and values the role parents have in the development of their own children.

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Children need unity between their parents, and between home and school. A necessary priority for Wollemi College is that every student finds harmony in their two major learning environments: home and school.


Wollemi seeks to provide an educational environment that reflects the parents’ own values through the example of staff, and in the curriculum and texts that are studied.

A number of very practical approaches ensure that the College works very closely with each boy's parents, ensuring that parents are, in fact, the first educators:

  • Wollemi parents meet with their son’s mentor four times each year in addition to the normal brief parent-teacher nights
  • Parents commit to attending the Key Parent Functions (KPFs) which are held in terms one to three: evenings featuring a guest speaker on a particular topic, ranging from the curriculum to parenting guidance.


At Wollemi, we see character education as an important offering for all our students. As we are trusted with the education of your son and join you in preparing them for life, ensuring that they are equipped to face life's successes and challenges remains at the heart of our mission.

Young men are equipped for life when their convictions are based on the firmness of human virtues, related to study and humanity.

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A virtue is a good habit and is acquired by carrying out some good action with regularity. Over time this regularity builds an enduring strength in one's character.


The family, where an overriding motivation is the welfare of the other members, is the environment par excellence for fostering virtue.

Students at Wollemi work hard, with responsibility in studies seen as a key to character development. By developing strengths of character such as sound judgement, self-control, courage and responsibility towards others, students are better able to use their freedom to make the right choices in life.

Ultimately, the capacity to truly love others and to be happy is a consequence of character with a well-rounded development of virtues.

Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it.

— Saint John Paul II Redemptor Hominis 10


Mentors are teachers, who apart from their classroom teaching take on an additional professional task that requires specific study and expertise. They are selected to fulfill this task according to individual preference, professional commitments, and personal suitability for working with individual students and parents. But all members of staff, whether they are mentors or not, are involved in a team approach based on the common awareness that they are educators of the whole person, above all, by their personal example of their own virtues. 

Extract from “Parents for Education”

Virginia Monagle in Kappa Delta Phi Record (Autumn 1993)

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The Mentoring System at Wollemi College serves the personalised education that is most distinctive of Wollemi. The mentor supports parents by walking alongside them as they prepare their son for adulthood and the responsibilities and choices that come with it.

While the schooling years require academic rigour, forming their idea of what to do beyond their time at Wollemi College, it is also the crucial years that set them apart as men of good character. An individual mentor, who is amongst the teachers of the school, is appointed to each student and is provided with the necessary training to support your son while at school.


The mentor meets with the boy every fortnight to catch up on their progress and performance at school, help them develop personal and academic goals, and check in on their social relationships, always striving to provide guidance and assurance where needed. Additionally, the same mentor will meet with his parents to provide feedback, report progress and establish common priorities to be fostered at home.

The focus of the Mentoring system is to lead the young person to think for himself and to work on acquiring virtues he will need as he moves through his schooling years and into adult life. Through his relationship of friendship and trust with the student, the mentor provides a personal example and can direct their mentee to further examples or resources for acquiring life lessons and motivations.

The mentor is tasked with helping his mentee develop positive habits such as responsibility, thoughtfulness and good use of time. A young person who has received this support throughout school years has the advantage of long term mentorship and the benefits which come with that.

Ultimately, each student develops the habit of objectively facing challenges, and reflecting on his own strengths and weaknesses, setting him up for independent goal-setting and achievements.

The Mentoring System is an effective reinforcement for parents, who can rely on a trusted mentor to reinforce key values with one’s son. The parents can be assured that their mentor is well-placed to coordinate the efforts of all those contributing to their son's education.

The Mentoring System as it operates in Wollemi is unique to the PARED Schools in Australia. There is no other mentoring system that offers one-on-one time for each and every student as well as their parents, multiple times throughout the year.

Spirituality

The spiritual development of students forms an integral part of their education at Wollemi College. Our Religious Education program is guided by the teachings of the Catholic Church and the spirituality of Opus Dei - a personal prelature of the Catholic Church. Our school community is immersed in a life of Christian virtue, guiding and helping each individual to discover the joy of having a close and personal relationship with God.

Josemaria Escriva was born in Barbastro, Spain in 1902. As a teenager, he had the conviction that God was asking something special of him and so he decided to study for the priesthood. He was ordained in 1926.

During a retreat he was attending, on 2 October 1928, he received a vivid and wholly supernatural understanding from God in his soul that he should found Opus Dei. The name means “Work of God”. 

Opus Dei’s mission is to promote among men and women of all walks of life a profound awareness of the universal call to holiness, that all Christians have been called by God to seek holiness in and through their daily work, family life, and social relations.

Saint Josemaria Escrivá encouraged parents to exercise greater responsibility in the education of their children.

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He taught that schools are primarily a support for parents who are the primary educators and that parents should work in active cooperation with the schools their children attend. These teachings have now inspired the development of over 150 schools across dozens of countries since the early 1950s.

Image used with permission underCreative Commons Licence CC BY-SA 2.0


The Wollemi Chaplaincy offers spiritual support for the students, parents and teachers of the school community. Mass is celebrated in the College Chapel on weekdays at 10.30am. The sacrament of Confession is available daily from 8.00-8.30am, after weekday Mass, during religion periods, and by appointment with the Chaplains.

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The Chaplains also give regular talks to student groups and offer spiritual guidance to individual members of the school community.


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Whole School Masses are celebrated at the beginning of the academic year, as well as on Ash Wednesday, the Feast of the Assumption, and All Saints Day. Solemn Benediction and Exposition is celebrated every first Friday of the Month, and a Eucharistic procession is held annually near the feast of Corpus Christi. The Chaplaincy also hosts an annual family picnic and Rosary during May.

The spiritual formation of the school is entrusted to Opus Dei, a personal prelature of the Catholic Church.

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Our Sister School: Montgrove

Wollemi enjoys a strong relationship with our sister school Montgrove College (https://www.montgrove.nsw.edu.au/), which is a short 10-minute drive from our campus. Both schools share the same ethos and partner with parents through the unique 1-on-1 mentoring system to help each student achieve their personal best and to grow into men and women of good character.

WOLLEMI
Yr 2-Yr 12

All boys Year 2 to Year 12. Kindy to Year 1 boys go to Montgrove.

MONTGROVE
K-Yr 12

Co-ed from Kindy to Year 1. Girls only from Year 2 to Year 12.

Our schools value a single-sex education and draw on this to provide for the pastoral and academic needs that are unique to young men and women.

One of the unique benefits offered to families whose children attend both Wollemi and Montgrove is that the sibling concessions, including the building levy and fees (based on concurrent enrolments), apply across Wollemi and Montgrove. For example, a family pays the Family Building Levy once even though they have children at both schools.

Employment Opportunities

If you are interested in working for Wollemi College, we advertise employment opportunities via seek.com.au.

>> Click here for a list of current opportunities at Wollemi College

If there are no current opportunities, you may wish to submit an expression of interest for future roles with the School’s HR Team at hr@pared.edu.au

Find out how to apply

Kindergarten to Year 1