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Marshmead: ahead of its time
Ahead of its Time
From its beginnings until today, MLC’s landmark Year 9 Marshmead program has aimed to provide students with an inspiring community living experience within an environmentally sustainable framework.
At the establishment of the Marshmead campus in 1991, then-Principal David Loader, wrote: “The emphasis at Marshmead is on the total experience and personal growth, and not exclusively on the development of intellect. Marshmead is not about one person living in isolation but a person in community, living, working, believing.” With Year 9 students spending eight weeks living at the residential site, this philosophy is still apparent after more than thirty years. The idea for Marshmead came twelve years prior in 1979, when Mr Loader received a request from the Student Representative Council for a ‘country campsite’. After Far North Queensland had been ruled out, the search was eventually narrowed down to Victoria,with East Gippsland the front runner.
Today, Marshmead accommodates approximately 70 students each term and has over twenty staff, including teachers, nurses, catering staff, a farm manager, property manager and maintenance staff. Students and staff live in a small village in which residential accommodation and classrooms are clustered around the Margaret Williams Centre, the central facilities building. This enables students to build on their relationships with others, with a view to improve their communication and decision-making skills, and to understand their experiences as individuals and adolescents working together within a small community. Marshmead is not connected to an electricity grid and is therefore responsible for its own power generation and supply. It is based on a Remote Area Power Supply system, providing an excellent educational resource when studying renewable energy. The system is comprised of an 88kW photovoltaic array, batteries, inverters and a generator. The houses have been constructed utilising the principles of Environmentally Sustainable Design (ESD) and are north facing. Each house has a set of roof-mounted solar hot water panels to heat its own hot water service tank. During their stay, students continually monitor their use of power and water and examine ways in which to reduce their consumption of these important resources. The rural setting of Marshmead encourages students to consider their use of energy more holistically in accord with nature. For MLC’s Director of Education Outdoors, Mark Loveday, the Marshmead experience is more than just a nature experience for our students; it’s a journey toward adopting a positive mindset and sustainable way of life: “Living eight weeks away from family, over five hundred kilometres away from Melbourne has a tremendous impact on adolescents and the way they live their lives when they return to Melbourne. Students walk away with specific tools to interact with the world more positively and live in a more environmentally sustainable way.”
Students attending Marshmead for Term 1 2022 set foot on the Marshmead campus for the first time
The very first students attend Marshmead, in Term 1 1991.
