Case Study: Templestowe College

Overview

Templestowe College is a Victorian government co-educational secondary school in Melbourne’s north-east. In 2010, it had fewer than 300 students and was under genuine threat of closure (Ryan, 2013). Appointed as principal during this period, Peter Hutton challenged the school community to reconsider what students actually needed rather than continuing a traditional age-graded model of schooling. Influenced by Montessori principles, particularly student agency, self-direction and experiential learning, the College introduced an adolescent Montessori program for Years 7 to 9. At the time, this was the only state secondary Montessori program in Australia (Ryan, 2013).

The transformation began in 2009 and by 2015 the College had removed year levels entirely and transitioned to a fully individualised learning model (Templestowe College, n.d.). Enrolments have since grown to approximately 1,227 students (My School, 2025). In 2023, the College was named Australian Government Secondary School of the Year at the Australian Education Awards (The Educator, 2023). The school occupies a 15-acre campus where sports fields, garden areas and animal paddocks form part of the everyday learning environment, reinforcing its experiential heritage.

What Templestowe College Does Differently

As a Victorian government school, Templestowe College delivers the Victorian Curriculum and accredited senior certificates. Its innovation lies in reorganising access, progression and student choice within that framework.

TC has no year levels, but students must reach numeracy and literacy benchmarks before they can embark on their own learning journey. A student’s path through school may take between four and eight years depending on readiness, interests and pace. Mixed-age classes are the norm, with students across what would notionally be Years 7 to 12 learning alongside one another. Students may access VCE subjects at any age when deemed academically prepared. These structural reforms reposition progression around readiness rather than age, redistributing responsibility to students and their mentors for pacing and direction.

All students develop an Individualised Learning Program, co-created with parents and staff and reviewed annually. When students begin at TC, they select approximately one third of their learning program and progressively assume responsibility for their full curriculum as functional literacy and numeracy are established. More than 150 electives are offered each year, generated in response to student demand rather than predetermined cohort sequencing. While many subjects align with conventional Victorian Curriculum domains, the distinguishing feature is that curriculum is co-created with students rather than delivered to them, positioning students as active participants in shaping their learning trajectories.

The Connect Mentor system pairs each student with a staff member who supports them across multiple years, building sustained relational knowledge and acting as a consistent advocate throughout their schooling. This longitudinal mentoring structure provides continuity within a highly flexible learning environment, ensuring that autonomy is scaffolded through stable adult relationships rather than experienced as independence alone.

A key innovation is the Expanded Measures of Success (EMS) framework, which recognises transferable skills alongside academic achievement. Students set semester-based goals aligned to EMS indicators in every subject and reflect on these through reporting processes. This broadens the definition of success beyond traditional academic metrics.

A school-wide “Yes is the default” principle means that any reasonable request from a student, parent or staff member is approved unless it is unreasonably costly, time-consuming or detrimental to others. Students sit on School Council and co-design leadership programs, participating directly in decision-making processes.

Evidence of Impact

Enrolments have increased from fewer than 300 students in 2010 to approximately 1,227 in 2025 (My School, 2025). Year 7–10 retention in 2024 was 79.5%, above the state average in similar schools (Templestowe College, 2024). Post-school destination data indicates that 81.5% of students transitioned to further study or employment in 2023 (Templestowe College, 2024). Attitudes to School Survey data reported in the 2025 Annual Implementation Plan indicate that the Student Voice and Agency measure remains below the school’s strategic targets (Templestowe College, 2025). This may reflect a range of factors, including the ambitious nature of the targets themselves, and does not necessarily indicate weak student experience. It does suggest, however, that structural commitments to student agency are not always straightforward and reflected in student perception data. Survey indicators alone cannot explain these patterns, and further classroom-level research would be needed to understand how students experience agency in practice.

In 2023, the College broadened senior pathways to include VCE Vocational Major and continued implementation of the Expanded Measures of Success framework (Templestowe College, 2024).

Enablers

• Near-closure in 2010 created urgency and licence for radical redesign.
• Long-term principal leadership established the philosophical foundations, with subsequent leadership institutionalising rather than personalising reform.
• Deliberate use of Victorian Curriculum flexibility enabled structural and pedagogical redesign while remaining compliant.
• Equity, Disability Inclusion and mental health funding streams support Youth Workers, psychologists and mentoring systems, ensuring autonomy is relationally scaffolded.
• Enrolment growth suggests increasing parent confidence in a non-traditional model.

Key considerations

Attendance remains an ongoing area of focus. Average absence days increased from 24 in 2021 to 30 in 2024, according to data reported in the 2025 Annual Implementation Plan (Templestowe College, 2025). In a model that emphasises high levels of student autonomy and flexible learning pathways, this trend suggests the importance of exploring how highly flexible structures support students with different needs for guidance, routine and external scaffolding. However, attendance data should be interpreted cautiously, as changes in cohort composition, including the enrolment of students with prior school refusal or disrupted attendance, may influence whole-school patterns.

Student perception data presents a similarly complex picture. 2024 Attitudes to School Survey results placed Student Voice and Agency at 51% and Teacher Concern at 42%, both below the school’s strategic targets (Templestowe College, 2025). As noted above, these figures should be interpreted cautiously, but they do suggest that structural commitments to agency are not always uniformly reflected in student perceptions of belonging and support.

Questions of scalability also remain. The model has evolved over fifteen years through sustained leadership, community trust and investment in wellbeing infrastructure. Replication elsewhere may depend on the development of similarly stable relational and cultural conditions. Several Victorian schools, including Mount Alexander College and Bundoora Secondary College, have explored related approaches to student agency and flexible learning structures, suggesting that elements of the model are influencing broader discussions about middle years schooling reform.