The school-designed Senior Steiner subjects of the Optional Pathways Program, endorsed by the Board of Studies, arose initially in answer to the following needs:

• To make the final two years of senior studies more positive, more relevant and of lasting benefit to today's student;
• To encourage greater student initiative and autonomy;
• To reduce stress and success/failure pressure;
• To encompass both breadth and depth across subject area;
• Through a year-long project based on students' own research in an area of interest to them, to develop skills, competencies and attitudes which will fit them for any course or direction in life;
• To send to tertiary colleges and institutions, mature, stable students who will choose wisely, achieve well and complete courses they undertake.

The Optional Pathways Program recognises that students have different strengths, not all of which can be quantified by the measurement of the HSC, but which nonetheless, do not necessarily preclude success at either secondary or tertiary level study.

The primary aim of the various options available through Glenaeon's Senior College is to give students the opportunity to realise their potential by whatever path is necessary and possible within the final years of secondary schooling. Depending on the student, this realisation could come via the HSC, by the alternative means of the Senior Steiner Course and its Major Project or, indeed, by the completion of both options over a three-year period.

By offering individual study programmes in the final years of secondary schooling, Glenaeon sees itself as affirming a commitment to the whole child, a focus begun in Kindergarten, continued in the Class Teacher period between Classes I and VIII and extending into Upper High School. The non-HSC option completes the Steiner curriculum that previously had been followed at Glenaeon only up to Class X. Based as the curriculum is on the understanding of the stages of child development, its focus at Senior College level rests on the consolidation of intellectual powers, the capacity for judgment, depth of feeling and the ability to carry initiative into action. Ultimately, the Optional Pathways Program is designed to strengthen students for adult life and support them in finding individual paths through which they can best serve themselves and their community.