Welcome to AEA’s ‘matters of record’ website dedicated to all schools, to independent schools and schooling, independent education and teaching, independent thinking to encourage  individual freedom. To commence simply in the great tradition, the common word ‘school’ originates from Old English scōl, scolu, via Latin from Greek skholē ‘leisure, philosophy, lecture place’, reinforced in Middle English by Old French école. The Greek meaning informs this website.

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However, here the developed philosophy enabling action 1973 until 2003: best education enables the individual mind to fly to the edge of the universe, then to return safely. This philosophy does not presently inform Australian education at school level, perhaps not at all.

 

In recent years education through Australian schooling has seen published ‘results’ dropping – PISA, some Naplan, HSC and similar public examinations – and there has been clamour for a return to ‘basics’ and ‘phonics’ and ‘tables’. Comparison with apparently effective schooling in other countries such as Singapore, Finland, China and others has been consistently unfavourable to Australian schools. Each December/January print and other media discuss ‘what has gone wrong in our education of our children?’ There are issues to be addressed immediately, should have been addressed long ago. No one can fail to be aware, then to be asking ‘why’?

 

Particularly those fortunate to be face to face daily with the issues must find answers. Among them by happenstance in the early 1980s the Headmastership of SCECGS Redlands fell to Peter Cornish, who under the authority of the Company SCECGS Redlands Ltd., and with benefit of matured guidance of the volunteer Board of Directors remained employed in that appointment until 2002/03. Rarely in school teaching can there have been such an opportunity.

 

Naturally it follows that this “case study’ is of SCECGS Redlands centred on 272 Military Road, Cremorne, New South Wales 2090, Australia.

 

It is hoped that the ‘case study’ assists those who are confronted in future with the same story, similar circumstances, the need to fight hard, fight cleverly to win.

 

As the formal record shows, from failure and error in the early 1970s when unforeseen local and international events colluded to cause the financial collapse of the SCEGGS Council Anglican girls’ schools in New South Wales, among its peers SCEGGS Redlands did not close, was not sold for its real estate value.

 

Instead a small group of parents accepted the school community’s nomination to become ‘Trustees' seeking to ensure SCEGGS Redlands’ continued future. Through a blend of personal ethics, active practical Faith, rare business acumen, courage, determination and dedication in three families whose daughters attended SCEGGS Redlands (later to become the equally well-known co-educational SCECGS Redlands) they kept Redlands open. With steely insistence they established a new model of ownership and governance as the means by which to repair all that had been so badly damaged by others. Governments were consulted, sometimes usefully.

 

Promises broken by others from about 1973 onwards were restored and then quietly honoured by parents who refused to allow SCEGGS Redlands to be closed, sold.

 

Over thirty years promises continued to be kept.

 

By 2003 SCECGS Redlands had been reconstructed financially through exemplary governance. Children’s schooling had been protected. Facilities had been recovered, expanded, donated, earned. Co-education had been pragmatically introduced in the late 1970s to underpin enrolments. By 2003 co-education had become embedded in the thinking, core educational values and beneficial practices of the school. The admired Grammar School model on which Redlands had been based since its 1884 foundation, then more formally recognised since 1945, had been enhanced. Performance was tested. Each passing year’s service to the child was routinely measured by a range of KPI metrics including public examinations such as the Higher School Certificate and the International Baccalaureate Diploma.

 

Underpinning everything, ‘business metrics’ of finance, facilities, return enrolments, applications for places, scholarship applications, employment conditions and many more were diligently applied. At the close of each year however the happiness of the individual child through his or her confidence in the school was recognised as the only 'metric’ that finally mattered. A professionally engaged Staff, encouraged by a volunteer Board of Directors considered this a crucial result of each year’s work.

 

On this website you will find a record of and commentary on those years 1973 to 2003 including extracts from newspapers of that time when SCEGGS Council on behalf of the Sydney Anglican Archdiocese announced the closure of schools including SCEGGS Redlands.

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You will also find original documents from some people involved with finding the safest way to ensure the school continued to operate; personal writing and comments from John H A Lang OAM, John W Roberts and Bruce B Adams are essential to understanding the depth of astute service to thousands of children and families who constitute the SCECGS Redlands community from 1884 onwards.

 

You will also find commentary on the ‘golden thread’ of education philosophy holding the entire enterprise tightly together, successfully together. Among the many influences deliberately introduced to ensure SCECGS Redlands avoided being educationally ‘ordinary’ are cited the non-urban experiential opportunities embedded in active curriculum, introduction of the International Baccalaureate in the late 1980s, that extensive co-curriculum, appointment of a full-time Anglican Chaplain in the early 1980s to ensure balanced reinforcement of Christianity in the core tenets of the school, and at centre: active intention to make best contemporary age-appropriate knowledge available to each child to be applied according to his or her ability, talent and encouraged motivation.

 

You will also find select biographical notes on some of the people who made all possible. Fortunate synergy of determined parents and an array of dedicated teachers shines through the narrative. Leadership emerged.

 

Overall the theme is: nothing was inevitable. Nothing is inevitable. Success is not assured. Schools and colleges, universities and institutes are fragile entities, easily damaged, sometimes carelessly destroyed. There have been some hundreds of Australian ‘private’ schools closed in the last forty years. The reasons are numerous. Yet to the contrary some European and Asian educational entities are among permanent ‘fixtures’ in global education history. Their example was considered during the reconstruction of SCECGS Redlands; their example offers even now centuries of hope.

 

Their example also motivates action. In the early 1990s a phone call to Redlands from a parent of Girton College, Bendigo, Victoria described the devastation of the then Bishop’s announcement that the College would close at the end of that year, owing to financial failure. It was reported that parents and children were in tears, could not fathom how more than one hundred years of school development could be wrecked in a single announcement. Dispossession. Assistance was requested. It was provided. Girton Grammar School today continues to thrive, continues to serve through that crucial structure: quality teaching in partnership with skilful governance.

 

Welcome indeed to this website. An undertaking given to John W Roberts in 1995/96 is hereby honoured; his written record is included. The work of Myrtle Gilham, Redlander, in producing Redlands in Retrospect (1983) in time for the Centenary is gratefully acknowledged. Both wanted to ensure the ‘story is told’.

 

But determination dominates the narrative. The website celebrates consciously the refusal of a small group of people in the 1970s to accept failure of others followed by school closure; instead they accepted the fierce challenge of SCECGS Redlands’ reconstruction. No excuses.

 

Others followed over the decades. Other schools copied what had been done. Assistance requested was given. The hard times of the 1970s were not forgotten. Lessons were learnt.

 

This website exists to assist in ensuring those lessons are not forgotten and even more importantly, are comprehended.

 

Peter J Cornish.  April 2020.