Welcome to Oxley College

We warmly welcome you and your family to the Oxley Senior School.
We are proud of the founding mission of Oxley College and its history, but we also look with optimism to the opportunities and challenges of the future, while keeping grounded in the present. We know that to nurture a love of learning, richness of opportunity and sense of belonging for each child is key.
Our aim is that your child’s Senior School years are joyful and magical; remembered with great fondness. Education is by its definition about growth. Growing and nurturing the development of each child in the Junior School,

Although the school began only forty years ago, it feels like it has been a part of the Southern Highlands landscape for much longer than that – perhaps founded in 1883, not 1983.

This is partly due to the graceful main building, Elvo, and the grounds. It is also, however, something deeper than that. I think it is because it seems necessary, indeed inevitable, that a community such as this should have a school such as Oxley.
The Southern Highlands is a community that has high expectations and wants its children to be able eventually to bestride their world, be it Madrid or Mittagong, Beijing or Bundanoon. Oxley has similar high expectations of its students and will let them see that, with rigour and hard work, almost anything is possible. We aspire to give the students the advantages of a ‘big city’ school, without parents having to send their children away to the boarding houses of Sydney or Melbourne.
At the same time most people in this community have made the conscious choice to raise their children in a local setting – one with forty thousand people, not four million. People want a school that reflects that. The beautiful grounds and relatively small size mean that every student is known and cared for. At the same time we are large enough to offer a strong variety of subjects, sports, activities, bands and social groups.

Many people in the Highlands want a school that is co-educational and non-denominational. This reflects their own world views about gender and the role of tolerant, ecumenical spirituality in a school setting. We respect the unique contributions of men and women and know the importance
of them working together. We also respect the profound, personal nature of each individual’s journey with regard to the ‘big questions’ of life. This respect is deep in Oxley’s soil.
So I think this is why it feels that Oxley has been here for much longer than forty years: we should have been here in the Southern Highlands since 1883. We are proud to reflect and bring out the best in this community. We are proud to educate the sons and daughters of those who choose to live here. We are proud to be the type of school we are.
On a more personal note, we look forward to meeting the most precious things in your life, to caring for them and exposing them to all of the amazing things that this world has to offer. We look forward to being a part of the miracle of their journey from childhood to adulthood. We have encyclopaedias in our library (figuratively), band aids in our sick bay, basketballs in the gym and violins in the music centre. We are ready to go. Welcome aboard.

Scott Bedingfield
Head of College