Inspired Spaces

Treetops Restaurant & Café

Our dining precinct offers a recreational and leisure space for students and staff to enjoy quality food, relaxation time and great company.  Treetops Restaurant provides sophisticated sit-down dining options and a function centre. The Meeting Place Café is perfect for a quick hot-chocolate (or coffee for the big kids), a sandwich and chat with friends while you soak up the sun. Many ‘foodie friendships’ flourish here.

Early Learning Centre

Our Early Learning Centre (ELC) is an architecturally designed, child-safe facility that promotes the attributes inherent in our International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme. Natural and built indoor and outdoor spaces are perfect for play-based and inquiry-based learning and an adventure playground strengthens little minds, muscles and fundamental movement skills.

Technical & Applied Studies Facility

The TAS facility is an industrious space where innovation, creation and design move from the theoretical to the practical. The facility offers safe, flexible and resource and technology-rich learning opportunities. It houses a digital fabrication suite, three fully-equipped modern wood and metal workshops, a welding bay and spray booth, two commercial kitchens, 3D printers, a textiles room and a major works store. It’s also not uncommon to see robots beeping-and-booping in here.

Farm & Agriculture Program

Our working farm located in South Maitland, is home to show steer, alpacas, pigs, sheep, lambs, calves and goats! Senior students visit the farm regularly for agriculture lessons and the HVGS Cattle Team meet there each morning before school to prepare their steer for showing. There’s also an agriculture plot located on the main school campus which includes three raised research plots, a commercial glasshouse and a poultry farm.  

Rowing Complex – Rayward Boathouse

HVGS rowers race and train at our modern rowing complex located right on the banks of the Hunter River at Berry Park. Thirteen ergometer machines, a gym, modern change rooms, a kitchen and function centre keep our athletes in tip-top shape. Our impressive fleet of boats include one flagship VIII, twelve quad sculls, five double sculls and sixteen single sculls.

Sport Facilities

You won’t find what we have at any other school in the region! A full-size rugby field, football pitch and cricket oval are used all year round. The Cameron Centre (multipurpose sport stadium) is a prominent feature in our School accommodating two indoor basketball and netball courts, a gymnasium, PDHPE classrooms, a full commercial kitchen and changing facilities. Outdoors, three cricket nets, three all-weather floodlit tennis courts and two multipurpose courts have all undergone refurbishment in recent years.

Music and Performing Arts

HVGS students make beautiful music in our amazing Music Centre. There are fifteen music studios for instrumental lessons, a fully equipped recording studio, an orchestra room, a percussion studio, a chamber room, a keyboard and computer lab, two Junior and three Senior music classrooms, two dedicated rehearsal classrooms, and two student instrument storage areas. Our drama studios are also located in the Centre.

The Weeks Library

Located in the heart of the School, the Weeks Library is the resource hub for students in Years 3 – 12. Reading and research programs, on-line facilities, up-to-date technologies, study spaces and casual reading areas provide opportunities for students to really connect with their learning. Students can also access Futures and Careers advice and information here. Our newly refurbished Lecture Theatre is also located here.

Students K – 2 can read all their favourite books in their own library located in the Junior School.

Our co-curricular offer is comprehensive.

Here you can explore a range of other fun and educational activities.  

HVGS provides holistic education for our students, supporting them to flourish academically, socially, physically, and emotionally. As a part of this approach, the HVGS Co-curricular Sports Program allows students to follow their passions and progress in their chosen sport.

HVGS recognises that with increased sporting success comes additional training and competition demands and that this can cause tension when also endeavouring to meet academic responsibilities.

Our Elite Athlete Program (EAP) program offers a holistic and personalised approach to supporting student learning by providing flexible learning options.

In 2023 the EAP was revised. Parents of HVGS enrolled students entering Years 7 – 12 in 2024, are now invited to submit an online application for their child/children, should you believe that your child meets the application criteria.

As a gentle reminder, all current EAP students are required to apply as they will not automatically receive the EAP for the following year.

We are in Ashtonfield (East Maitland). We are two hours north of Sydney, 30 minutes drive from Newcastle, 45 minutes drive from Port Stephens, 45 minutes drive from northern Central Coast, 35 minutes drive from the Upper Hunter, 1km from Green Hills Shopping Centre and 3km from Victoria Street train station in East Maitland. 
 

Public School Bus Services 

The School Opal Card gives eligible school students free or subsidised travel on public transport between home and school on trains, buses, ferries and light rail?in the Opal network. Click here to apply for an Opal Card.  

There are four public bus operators that provide services to HVGS school students:

• Hunter Valley Buses (Maitland, Singleton, Morisset, Lake Macquarie and Western Newcastle areas) 
  P: 4935 7200 
    
• Port Stephens Coaches (Port Stephens area) 
  P: 4982 2940 
   
• Rover Coaches (Cessnock, the Vineyards and surrounds) 
  P: 4990 1699 
    
• Busways (Karuah and Hawks Nest) 
  P: 4983 1560 

Travelling from Newcastle?

HVGS operates a free express bus service for students travelling from Newcastle to HVGS during term time. To access this service students must reside in Newcastle, attend HVGS and have obtained a HVGS bus pass from the School. Casual use of the service is not available at this time. 

Coming to HVGS: 

• Depart Newcastle: 7.45 am, Union Street bus stop
• Arrive: 8.25 am    

Going from HVGS to home: 

• Depart: 3.10 pm 
• Arrive Newcastle:  3:45 pm, Union Street bus stop 

Travelling from the Upper Hunter? 

HVGS operates a private bus service for students travelling from Gresford, Vacy and Paterson to School. Students who catch this bus to and from School must reside in these areas and attend HVGS. 

Coming to HVGS: 

• Departs Gresford at 7.20 am, with two stops at Vacy and Paterson

Going from HVGS to home: 

• Departs: 3.05 pm and stops at Paterson, Vacy and Gresford 

About our Scholarship Program

Scholarships at HVGS are designed to identify and nurture talent and enable students to pursue their passions. To this end, HVGS is committed to nurturing a diverse student body through a breadth of scholarships.

Beyond the financial benefits of a scholarship, students at HVGS join a community that is dynamic and committed to excellence within and beyond the classroom.

Students awarded a scholarship will demonstrate the School’s values in action prior to enrolment at HVGS, throughout the scholarship process, and during their time at the School. Scholarships at HVGS are modelled on the motto: “Success through Endeavour”. Scholarship students demonstrate that through hard work and resilience, success can be realised.

I acknowledge the Wonnarua people, the traditional Custodians of this land and pay my respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging, who hold the memories, traditions, cultures and hopes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

Welcome to Hunter Valley Grammar School

I am proud to say that our goals at HVGS are to ensure:

• Every child feels valued

• Every child feels like they belong

• Every child’s unique potential is understood and nurtured

• Every child experiences equity in their learning journey

• Every child can find their unique pathway to success.

At its heart, HVGS is a values-driven organisation that places students at the centre of all we do. We live and breathe our values (compassion, integrity, courage, citizenship, responsibility, gratitude, optimism, and respect). From the minute you walk through the gates you see it in the greetings from students and staff, and the pride we take in our connection to land and the Australian bush. Gum trees tower over our buildings and grounds and our students share their campus with a plethora of bird life.

Our campus extends beyond the school gates to Duckenfield Berry Park on the banks of the Hunter River where we have our rowing complex, and to our working farm in South Maitland where students can spend the early mornings tending cattle and sheep. We have a working agricultural plot, vegie garden and free-range chickens on campus, as well as three full-size ovals.

Learning at HVGS is about striving for excellence in all that we do. As an inclusive school, HVGS supports a multifaceted approach to success and strives to meet all students where they are in their learning journeys. This has led to multiple learning pathways in Years 11 and 12, a team of psychologists on site, and a well-resourced student support services team that includes gifted and talent enrichment as well as support for students with complex learning profiles.

We also honour the diversity of HVGS and seek to provide a learning environment which values that diversity and builds on it to help our students be compassionate and engaged young people. Each student and staff member at HVGS feels connected to each other, has autonomy in their work and learning, and is supported to achieve mastery. By doing this, we help each member of the community thrive.

As an International Baccalaureate (IB) world school, HVGS fosters critical and creative thinking and nurtures in our students care and compassion. We recognise that differences of thought and ways of being make for a rich and dynamic learning environment. Likewise, we foster in our students global citizenship so that they think beyond their regional and national context to understand our place in the world and the responsibilities we have to ensure a sustainable future for all.

HVGS is proudly a part of Maitland and the Hunter Region and seeks to foster our connections to community and land. We look forward to welcoming visitors to our bush-style campus in the heart of Maitland!

– Rebecca Butterworth, Principal

About Rebecca (she/her)

Rebecca is an experienced educator with a proven leadership record in diverse schools in Europe, Asia and Australia. She graduated from the University of Tasmania, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours and a double major in English, with minors in History and Psychology. She Rebecca completed her master’s dissertation “Analysis of the IB’s commitment to altruistic education”. Her commitment to lifelong study, values-based leadership, service to education and pathways for all students is richly entrenched in her DNA.

With over 20 years’ experience, Rebecca has taught in Australia, Singapore, China and Switzerland. Having taught overseas since 2003, Rebecca returned to Australia in 2022 with a wealth of knowledge and understands a global perspective on education. She is a vibrant and passionate Principal who is collaborative in approach, with high regard for integrity, humility and building capacity.