Geelong Grammar School offers a truly unique experience as one of the leading boarding schools in Victoria. The majority of students at Corio Campus, and all students at Timbertop Campus, are boarding students living away from home. Boarding forms the fabric of our School, and it is through boarding, in combination with co-education, that students are set up for success.
Living and learning at a boarding school nurtures valuable life skills, helping young people develop social and emotional skills alongside academics. Through a boarding environment, students are presented with responsibilities and challenges that promote the development of autonomy and resourcefulness. As well as a genuine respect for others that comes from co-existing closely together.
Friendships are fostered over meals in the Dining Hall, and student-teacher relationships are strengthened on the playing fields. Our close-knit community encourages conversational capacity and interpersonal intelligence, giving our young people the ability to connect and converse with others with maturity and confidence.
As one of our past parents tells us, ‘GGS students are comfortable and sensitive in all kinds of company’.
A key benefit of boarding is a longer day.
Uninterrupted immersion at School offers students continuity in learning, extended access to supportive staff, programmes, facilities and resources, inclusion in a bonded community, opportunity to pursue a wide range of interests and the constant presence and camaraderie amongst housemates and friends.
For families, there is comfort in the balance, constancy and structure that boarding provides. Affording a happy continuum between work, home, co-curricular activities, study and sporting commitments.
Our Corio and Timbertop Campuses are co-educational boarding schools.
Students educated in a co-educational boarding school are prepared socially, ethically and intellectually for life after school. Male and female students interact, learn together and contribute to an overall sense of community, learning how to respect and support one another.
Co-educational boarding also ensures that families can send all of their children to Geelong Grammar School together. This continuity and connectedness benefits them and provides a robust support network.
Students can attend Corio Campus as day students, weekly boarders or full boarders in Middle School, and day boarders or full boarders in Senior School. Our School attracts students from the local Geelong region, metropolitan Melbourne, regional, rural, interstate and overseas locations. There are no limits to the friendships that can be fostered, and the global outlooks that can be formed.
All students attend Timbertop as full boarders and participate in all facets of the educational experience, seven days a week.
We regard both of our boarding campuses as some of the best boarding schools in Australia, but there is something truly unique about Timbertop. Every week is a busy week, and every day is timetabled and well structured around class time, unit time, study time, running time, chapel time, jobs and service, and the necessities of eating and sleeping. Weekends (Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday and Thursday) are spent engaging in the Outdoors, Community Service or Co-curricular Programmes. There is never a dull moment at Timbertop!
Over 800 of our students are boarders, many of whom are able to do so through our extensive scholarship programme. Our boarding scholarships help students and families cover the costs of both tuition and boarding life for the duration of their time at Geelong Grammar School.
Boarding scholarships are awarded across a number of categories, including Academic, Music, Visual Art, Sport and General Excellence.