About Wollemi

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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