A Prep child in an oatmeal-and-green uniform walks into the blossoming orchard avenue on the first morning, a parent's hand just leaving the frame. Middle-years students walk down the summer orchard avenue, one holding the hand of a younger buddy. Senior students walk the autumn orchard avenue in golden afternoon light, one carrying a wooden crate of apples. A Year 12 student at the old trees at dusk turns to look back down the whole length of the orchard avenue they have walked.

P–12 · Kellerton · Est. 1961

One childhood, the whole way through.

One campus, Prep to Year 12 — where the tree a child plants in their first year is the one they pick from in their last.

Begin the story See the years

Prep – Year 2

Starting small

Prep to Year 2 is where children find their feet — early literacy and numeracy, plenty of outdoor time, and the tradition every Hartley Grove student begins with: in their first spring, each child plants a tree in the orchard.

Years 3 – 6

Finding their stride

By the junior years, children take on specialist subjects — science, music, languages and sport — and start reading each week with an older student through Sapling to Summit.

From our Principal, Ruth Calder

“I’ve watched this cohort grow from the front step to the far row — and I still know which tree is theirs.”

Families choose Hartley Grove once and stay, because the school they enrol a five-year-old into is the same one that hands their eighteen-year-old a graduation stole. The people don’t change out from under you; the thread holds.

Day to day that means a senior who reads with a Prep each week, a teacher who taught an older sibling, an orchard row a child returns to for thirteen springs. Continuity isn’t a promise we make — it’s the shape of the place.

Ruth Calder, Principal — 19 years at Hartley Grove

1961 2009
The Founders’ Orchard core — a ring for every year since we opened, drawn by hand.

The two ends of the school, together

Every senior is paired with a Prep buddy. They read together each week — 320 pairs this year.

Meet the pairs

Years 7 – 12

Full season

The senior years bring real choice — sciences and technology, music and performing arts, sport and senior pathways — with the results and support to back them.

The far end of the walk

Thirteen years on, this cohort picks from the trees they planted in Prep.

You’ve just watched one child grow from their first tree to their last — thirteen springs, one campus, the whole way through.

Now begin your own.

Enrolments are open across every year level, Prep to Year 12.

Begin the story Arrange a visit

Home Our Story

Since 1961

A school grown from an orchard

Hartley Grove began on a working family orchard in Kellerton — and never stopped being one. Our story isn’t a founding date on a crest; it’s the same rows, worked by the same hands, growing different children every decade.

Continuity, not prestige

In 1961 the Hartley family gave over part of their orchard to start a small school for the district’s children. The brief was modest: teach them well, and keep the trees. Sixty-five years on, several original rows still stand along Bellman’s Walk, worked each season by our orchardist Sal Petrakis, who has tended them for thirty years.

We measure ourselves by return rather than reputation. Families enrol a five-year-old and stay until a graduation stole; teachers arrive and build careers; former students come back as parents, and sometimes as staff. The orchard makes that continuity visible — a slow, working proof that this is one place with one long memory.

Where the Long Row began

The Long Row tradition started almost by accident: a Prep teacher had her class plant a tree each in their first spring, and marked the row with the year. Thirteen years later, that first cohort came back to pick from their trees at graduation. It has happened every year since. Each graduating year has its own row in the Long Orchard, and walking the rows is walking the decades.

Home Learning

Prep to Year 12

Learning across the years

One campus, one continuous program — early literacy through senior pathways, with specialist teaching folded in at the age it belongs. A family who wants the academic detail finds a complete school here, one step from the timeline.

Prep – Year 2

Early Years

The first years are about finding their feet: early literacy and numeracy, structured play and plenty of outdoor time. Every Prep child plants a tree in their first spring — the start of the Long Row. Specialist music and PE begin here.

  • Early literacy
  • Numeracy
  • Outdoor learning
  • Specialist music & PE

Years 3 – 6

Junior Years

Children take on specialist subjects — science, music, languages and sport — and begin reading each week with an older buddy through Sapling to Summit. Curiosity is the currency: measuring, making, asking.

  • Science
  • Music
  • Languages
  • Sapling to Summit

Years 7 – 9

Middle Years

The middle years broaden the world: full science and technology, the arts, languages and a wide co-curricular program, with the pastoral care to steady a big transition. Students start to shape their own path.

  • Science & Technology
  • The Arts
  • Languages
  • Pastoral care

Years 10 – 12

Senior Years

Real choice, with the results and support to back it: sciences and technology, music and performing arts, sport and senior pathways into university, training and work. The far end of the walk.

  • Sciences
  • Performing Arts
  • Sport
  • Senior pathways

The whole school

Specialist spaces

Same campus, same light, same warmth as the orchard — a real school whose orchard happens to be its heart, not its only room.

Classrooms

Warm timber rooms built for genuine, hands-on lessons.

Science

Real practical work at proper benches, from Year 3 up.

Technology

A bright workshop for robotics, making and design.

Music

Ensembles and lessons in the Petrakis Music Room.

Performing Arts

Drama and dance on a working school stage.

Sport

Team sport and athletics on grounds ringed by trees.