If academic success alone were the hallmark by which our College and its students were judged, Eynesbury’s record would speak quietly of outstanding accomplishments. But the excellent grades and tertiary entrance ranks – and the myriad pathways our students explore in universities around Australia and the world – speak about even greater successes, if less tangible.

Students come to Eynesbury from locations all over Adelaide, Australia and well beyond, but they are quickly taken up by the dominant culture of the organisation – and so many factors contribute to that culture: the conscious insistence on academic rigour and the clear and uninterrupted focus on the College’s reason for being – university entrance, the structure of the campus work day which aims to emulate the inevitable university career which will follow – combined with two-hour lessons providing a venue to pursue learning with intensity, or the absence of a raft of ‘accessories’ to traditional, comprehensive schools’ academic programs – co-curricular activities, house meetings, assemblies, sports days and swimming carnivals, uniforms and bells ... none of these is found at Eynesbury. And our teachers are similarly able to concentrate on the task at hand. Time which in other schools is devoted to meetings, sports supervision or yard duty is exclusively given over to spending additional time with students in one-to-one or small group support. Eynesbury’s academic staff is exactly that – they teach only senior secondary and are attuned to the essential undertaking.

These approaches contribute to a culture which promotes the enjoyment of hard work, improvement and achievement, but the engine of this enterprise is the development of the learner-teacher relationship. It is fundamentally a simple equation: place quality teachers with students in an atmosphere where learning is prized and successes will follow. It is as easy – and as difficult – as that, and it works as a powerful formula. It gives me no greater joy than to witness the looks on the faces of parents and prospective students as I walk them through the College when it is under full load, when it takes on the industrious glow of an enterprise doing what it does well, and they see teachers working with students they know thoroughly, operating in an atmosphere of mutual respect. It is uplifting, it provides our parents with real confidence, and our students often point out the satisfaction and liberation which comes of learning in such an environment.

I invite you to share with us the many things which make the College unique and which nearly twenty years of graduates have recognised as the pre-eminent university entrance pathway.

John Warren