"[7] The inaugural headmaster, the Reverend Edmund King Miller, served in very difficult circumstances: when about 100 children had been admitted he applied to the trustees for an assistant, a request that was refused on the ground that there was a debt on the building they wished to liquidate.

Emma Mitchell joined later in the year, mainly to take charge of the separate education of girls; but eventually an assistant for Miller, a William Pepper, was engaged.

Miller remained on relatively poor terms with his trustees, largely owing to their failure to recognise the magnitude of the workload that fell on him, including his church work.

In 1855 a great drift away from government schools took place,[11] perhaps associated with the exodus to the Victorian goldfields and consequent economic downturn in Adelaide.

[6]: 112, 114 The move occurred half-way through the tenure of the school's longest-serving headmaster, William Percival Nicholls, 1901–1942, under whom enrolments increased steadily.

During lunch hours there were pitched battles in the creeks that ran through the cow pasture opposite Pulteney, with both sides throwing rocks and cow-pats.

The headmaster often stood at the windows overlooking the area and, with his binoculars, picked out the various students who were fighting; they were subsequently invited to a dreaded meeting in his office.

World War II, with its many privations including a severe shortage of teachers, took its toll and by 1944 the school was facing a crisis of such magnitude that its future was again in the balance.

Ray, to whom the boys gave the nickname "Rufus", and later "The Boss", was described by his deputy as "something of a maverick: he made his own rules, was bound by nothing or nobody, and was a supreme headmaster whose care for his pupils and staff was infinite."

[21][d] According to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, in 2022 there were 894 pupils (505 boys, 389 girls) at the school and 139.5 full-time equivalent staff (95 teaching, 44.5 non-teaching).

The school went ahead with demolition,[47] citing a need to act quickly to take advantage of the national economic stimulus program following the 2007–2010 global financial crisis[48] and that retaining the building was neither practical nor affordable.

[47] In August 2023, a petition was circulated by self-described "members of the Pulteney community" complaining about changes in the school's culture; the departure or reassignment of teachers, which had caused a deficit of experience and unreasonable expectations of remaining staff; a decline in university entrance scores and primary-level pupil assessments; and changes such as the merging of its middle school and the previously self-contained unit for year 11 and 12 students.

The school's board promptly engaged an independent firm to conduct a review of its leadership, to be completed by mid-October.