03 Jul 2026
We are proud to share that Education Review recently featured an insightful article by our very own Director of Innovation and Partnerships, Melissa Etherton.
The piece, How one girls’ school approaches Experiential Learning, explores how Loreto Toorak consciously embeds real-world experiences into the fabric of our students’ lives. By moving beyond the traditional classroom, we provide our students with meaningful platforms to test their strengths, engage deeply with complex ideas, and develop the voice and agency required to shape the world around them.
There is a particular kind of confidence that grows when young women are invited to test their strengths in the world beyond the classroom.
It often emerges in smaller, quieter moments. I’ve witnessed it seeing them sitting alongside a university professor seriously pitching an idea of social impact, or living and learning on Country with Traditional Owners: cooking
together, learning language or simply sitting silently and deeply listening.
Through these experiences, students begin to recognise capacities in themselves that shape their thinking and future direction.
Where I work, at Loreto Toorak, we consciously embed these moments into the fabric of our students’ lives.
Academic achievement and a strong sense of self together create the fullest foundation for growth. For young women in particular, it matters that a contemporary education not only recognises excellence, but also helps
students name, trust and extend their own strengths.
What is experiential learning?
Experiential learning is an educational approach that invites students to immerse themselves in hands-on, real-world experiences and engage deeply in learning beyond the classroom.
Through active participation, reflection and application, students expand their perspectives and connect knowledge to authentic contexts.
It is a holistic approach, one that develops not only knowledge, but also critical thinking, skills and values, ultimately empowering students to contribute to and shape the world in which we live.
Girls and young women consistently demonstrate exceptional academic capability, and this must be celebrated.
What schools have an obligation to do is ensure that this achievement is matched by equally strong enrichment opportunities to develop voice, agency and a clear sense of what and how they can contribute.
When students are given expressive and meaningful platforms to take risks, engage deeply and see their ideas land in real-world contexts, they are more likely to lean in, extend their thinking and approach challenge and
uneasiness as part of academic growth.
Collaboration and partnerships
This belief shapes our approach at Loreto Toorak through our commitment to academic enrichment partnerships.
These are modern co-curricular collaborations available to our students, each designed to help them discover new strengths, deepen existing talents and expand their sense of what is possible.
Take for instance our partnership with Monash University – Art, Design and Architecture, where Year 9 students work side-by-side with Monash’s Head of Design, Professor Gene Bawden, across an eight-week ‘agents of change’ program since 2024.
Students are not just attending an academic lecture. They are developing ideas, being challenged, and receiving bespoke, meaningful feedback.
This is a sentiment echoed by Professor Bawden.
“Their capacity to collaborate and creatively address some of the world's most daunting challenges has, year after year, been astounding,” he said.
“Framed around the themes of 'social justice' and 'climate action', the Loreto teams identify a problem, then using a number of design thinking strategies, develop their solution.
“Their outcomes are always unique, thoughtful, creative, human centred and – importantly – viable; equivalent to (and sometimes better!) than those of our university students. They are truly skilled design thinkers.”
We have similar partnerships with Deakin University in motor learning and sport science and with the Australian Catholic University in law. Importantly, these programs are not presented to students as standalone
skills or units. They are framed academic enrichment and personal growth opportunities.
The skills they develop during these programs – critical thinking, creative problem solving, engaging with complex ideas, collaboration, and confidence – transfer everywhere.
The weight of learning
Then there are other experiences that go deeper than the curriculum can reach. Our annual immersion to Cape York, delivered in partnership with social enterprise Red Earth, takes Year 11 students on Country to live, learn
and engage directly with First Nations Traditional Owners and cultural educators, camping alongside their homes and simply ‘being’ with their families.
The program is transformative in a way that is genuinely difficult to summarise through a few words; however, its impact on the next generation of change-makers is both substantial and genuinely humbling. Education, enrichment and growth in the purest forms.
The immersion is not only a significant component of Loreto Toorak's commitment to reconciliation, but a pivotal formation experience for our students.
It creates authentic openings for students to deeply listen to Traditional Owners and Elders, ask their most confronting questions and begin shaping a perspective that will continue to evolve long after they leave us.
The weight of that learning is visible when students return – it is what you carry forward.
This year, those students presented to a staff meeting during Reconciliation Week – sharing intimate conversations, reflecting on personal impact, and imploring the staff to acknowledge that learning is far more than an assessment result
For young women, these moments are especially powerful because they turn ability into something lived and visible. When there is no familiar rubric or roadmap to follow, students come to recognise that what carried them forward was not luck, but capability, resourcefulness and courage.
That is precisely what immersive experiences and partnerships can offer: environments where students are invited to show initiative, find their footing, ask deep and specific questions and grow into a fuller sense of themselves.
Schools that invest in these experiences, not as an add-on but as a core part of what a modern education means, will be the ones developing graduates who do not simply enter the world, but have the strength and confidence to contribute to it with verity, compassion and genuine leadership.
For us at Loreto Toorak, academic achievement, personal growth and Academic enrichment opportunities are celebrated.
Curiosity, confidence, adaptability and the capacity to engage meaningfully with the world as it actually is, it helps our young women walk with purpose and a true sense of responsibility.
This article first appeared in Education Review. July 2, 2026
Read the full article on Education Review here.