Facilities and Resources

The Sr Barbara McDonough Building, opened in 2012, was designed with our female students in mind. The learning spaces, including classroom size rooms and smaller breakout spaces, are clustered around a large learning area to form a learning centre or learning hub.

There are five such learning centres in this building, and each are connected and some have moveable walls to allow for a variety of different size learning areas to be created. The furniture in the learning spaces also caters for a variety of learning approaches.

The learning centres foster a culture of inquiry, to which the girls really respond. The spaces can be adapted for structured and social learning.

The spaces allow for student-owned learning, collaboration and project work, as well as more teacher-directed learning experiences when needed.

The social learning opportunities especially cater for the education of female students. The design allows for a seamless transition of learning pedagogies within a lesson so as to provide a 'learning continuum.'

The lesson may start, for example, with a teacher-directed session. The girls then move into the open areas for group work sessions, or into smaller break out rooms to work individually or with their teacher in a small group or one to one.

The glass walls allow the students to be seen by the teachers when they are in the different areas. The glass is all acoustic glass to minimise the noise, and the panelling throughout not only creates a pleasant, stimulating learning environment, but also absorbs noise.