A Personal Reflection on SCECGS Redlands: 1981 - 2003

Peter Cornish M.A., Dip.Ed., FACE.

Headmaster, then Executive Headmaster.

About SCECGS Redlands, schools, schooling and education.

After Murakami – Japanese writer – 2 Jan 2019.

I thought that once the work was finished in 2002 at Redlands, it was finished. To be asked to become “Chancellor” in 2002, an appointment not previously existing, was acceptable because from the day in September 2001 when I told the then Chairman that I would take extended leave in 2002, I knew the intention was to change the Headship of the school. It was all in the excited smile on the Chairman. Unmistakable. So it was just a matter of how to play it out to best advantage and go on to other enjoyable work. There was not a moment of surprise: 21 years at the main desk of the school was enough, the accomplishments of the key people over the decades were proven, and the student children of Redlands had in the main been well served and had gone on confidently from their school, schooling and education. After 21 years of monthly Board meetings, ‘reading’ the new Chairman’s and the Board’s restlessness, keenness on ‘change’ was a well-developed skill.

Through 2002, with the apt but painful metaphor of a broken arm from my fall working on a lakeside house in Kilcare on the Central Coast notwithstanding the appointment as “Chancellor” continued as agreed after details of my leaving the Headship were confirmed. My assessment of the arrangement was that it was to my advantage, the Board having agreed to the arrangement after our 21 years of school development and community satisfaction could only mean that they wanted to take the school forward differently, and it was ‘time’.

Was I tired? No, but I did insist upon taking steady steps onward, consistently and in a measured manner. It was always possible, I knew, that I had stayed long enough, that I may have been seeing different generations incorrectly. Some of my interaction with younger mothers and fathers in the Junior School suggested this to me over 2000/2001.

I also felt that the work done had embedded the qualities in the school that would carry it onwards, for the children and their families present and those yet to arrive at the gate. There was a well founded legacy of thought, teaching and example embedded, I thought.

Therefore it was possible to take up appointment in consultancy to the Sydney Japanese School for two years to assist that tiny school, of entirely different origin and profile from Redlands. Subsequently it was possible with confidence to join a long-standing friend in acquiring the Australian College of Physical Education in 2004, the College having been integral to the educational structure of Redlands, but a casualty of the Board’s thinking after 2002 that the school should “get back to core business”, a view I had reported to me by others. In due course it was possible with clear mind to sell ACPE to a larger organization with a global presence, move into Vocational Education and Training, eventually to close out that interest as a result of seeing that in that training or education activity, the ‘gold standard’ of exceptional delivery in training and education did not exist. Rather it was tainted with the involvement of the State’s setting ‘standards’ and business models.

Unfavourable in all respects, though understandable when looked at as a State-based service to post-school adult skills training, I was shocked at the weakness of vision in VET NSW and possibly in Australia. On life-affecting human services I was left with the regret that the standards developed at Redlands, from bankruptcy in the late 1970s to measurable ‘gold standard’ service delivery in the late 1990s, were not available to those who enrolled in the VET sector. It may be that apprenticeship based and trade-based training in the sector’s workshops were as good as could be achieved, but this certainly was not true in the daily work-skills training with which I became familiar through Teach Me Law Enforcement. The decision to close the RTO as an active participant was easy though disappointing.

What then did I leave behind when I left Redlands?

In the early to mid 1970s the Anglican Girls’ Schools in Sydney and outskirts were bankrupted by decisions taken to acquire extensive real estate in Darlinghurst within the CBD, and the intersection of those decisions with increases in inflation in the 1970s to as high as 18% (RBA Governor commentary). As a young repatriated teacher from the UK, newly returned to Shore School North Sydney, I was acutely aware that from month to month my salary cheque seemed not to be ‘the same’. I placed the blame for this on the Whitlam Government elected in December 1972, but hindsight shows this to have been inaccurate. Did it matter? Not really – the teaching continued, salary continued, and personal confidence remained high that there was a suitable career to be followed in teaching in the independent sector of schooling in Australia. In addition I had been paid about 95 pounds per month teaching in England, had existed well on a small stipend in lecturing in Sweden, and had always felt that such remuneration was adequate, was not at all the purpose of work.

The closest SCECGS Redlands came to being immediately in view was when the Anglican Archdiocese announced that the girls’ schools would be closing as soon as could be achieved, owing to financial failure. The Headmaster of Shore, “Jika” Travers, spoke in the Common Room of girls from Darlinghurst perhaps having to become students at Shore. Being a boys-only school in a wealthy context, with a long history of community association, Shore was unlikely to be disturbed. The staff continued to be confident in each man’s own well-being, appointment and income. The press reports of closure of various schools – SCEGGS Moss Vale, SCEGGS Loquat Valley, SCEGGS Wollongong, and with a battle apparent also SCEGGS Redlands nearby. The school SCEGGS Council aimed to ‘save’ was SCEGGS Darlinghurst.

In the 1970s, now joyfully married and still committed to teaching at the best ‘standards’ possible, I found opportunities being placed close to hand. A travelling scholarship in Asia in 1974 to become familiar with Asian theatre and drama had direct links to the work at Shore and in the independent schools. Innovative thinking about the ways and means of communicating education and training to young adults included theatre and drama. Whilst disciplined ‘instruction’ remained at the centre of education method, new approaches to ‘catch the mind of the child’ were considered, theatre and drama being among them. The ‘60s’ had made an impact, albeit slowly and steadily, on the classroom and the staff room alike.

In the late 1970s my wife Elizabeth and I moved to Armidale NSW where I had been appointed Deputy Headmaster of The Armidale School, a boys-only boarding institution founded in 1892 as a purpose-built alternative to Sydney boarding schools. In this school the children of graziers and pastoralists could be educated, perhaps more locally with easier access to homes. TAS was a Greater Public School (GPS) and had remained so despite being so far from Sydney. The three years at TAS were invaluable. A pleasant country context, purpose-built facilities, with a clientele of inestimable merit, TAS had fallen foul of the Independent Teachers’ Association (ITA) a teachers’ Union. Working in that atmosphere initially, resolved favourably over time, was instructive, underlining critical elements of school management and, as I came to realize through the even-handed, the measured leadership of the Headmaster Alan Cash, school governance.

One Saturday in mid to late 1980 an advertisement appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald for applications to be submitted for Principal of SCEGGS Redlands in Cremorne, Sydney. Owing to our having arranged and led groups of boys from TAS to theatre and drama in Sydney, part of the aim being to improve HSC results and make opportunities at TAS equal for boys as though they were at school in Sydney, we had borrowed the Redlands’ mini-bus. This benefit was made possible through the assistance of a member of the then Board of Redlands, Mr. Warwick Lewarne, who had known something of Elizabeth and me during the years at Shore. The mini-bus was not in good order, as it became clear, when it broke down after one evening at theatre and we waited on Eastern Valley Way at 2 a.m. for the NRMA service vehicle to arrive. The reason was battery failure. We purchased a new battery and donated it to the school as a ‘thank you’ for the loan of the vehicle; it was a genuine gift for genuine assistance offered to us. However it became apparent subsequently that the bus was a suitable metaphor for the condition of SCEGGS Redlands in 1980, caused and intensified by the collapse of the SCEGGS Council schools, noted above.

Despite the metaphor, discussed with Elizabeth and with the Headmaster Alan Cash, I decided to apply for the Principalship. I did little background research – teaching and Deputy Headmaster duties did not allow much time even in a boarding school environment where living ‘on the job’ made it possible to walk to work and be home rapidly when needed. Self-confidence was also abundant after the TAS years: so much had been learnt and the HSC results leapt off the page with the result that the inflow of Day Boys from the Armidale community required the formation of a Day Boy House, nurtured and fostered by the inimitable Mr. Fred Dore who had long been a staff member of TAS.

Invited to interview in due course, becoming aware of some under-currents revealed in notes from people in Sydney and ultimately in some of the kindest Christmas cards it is possible to imagine, after some 31 hours of interview by the Board and its various committees, I was honoured to be appointed Principal of SCEGGS Redlands as from May 1981. The agreement with the Chairman and Board was that salary would be $25,000.00 – less than was payable to the Deputy Headmaster at TAS – and an allowance for use of our private car. Superannuation would be arranged in due time when possible. I chose to go to Redlands as Principal, subsequently assuming the honorable title Headmaster, because it was in some obvious trouble, from which opportunity might well arise, and it had a famous history from its establishment in 1884. Located on Military Road Cremorne, with a second small frontage to Gerard Street, clearly its future was positive if its leadership, management, teaching and governance were in alignment. Families and children would come to trust the school and its potential for ‘gold standard’ education and training, benchmarked internationally.

Particular among the advantages of the school was the decision taken some time before to change the school’s profile from girls-only to co-educational. This meant the school could be a leader among independent schools, could offer a key feature not offered widely in the Sydney independent schools’ community and if the HSC results became noteworthy would become a beacon for co-educational school models, for development little known in the Australian independent sector but becoming a focus of attention outside the ‘sandstone schools’.

On the first day ‘on site’ though it became apparent that there was a lot of work needed to reconstruct the school’s daily operations, signified by the school’s tiny playground being ‘invaded’ by private cars of staff being parked there. The bat-wing doors behind the reception desk in the cottage on Military Road, serving as the administration area, assisted in making clear how basic things were: they could be heard banging together every time someone walked down the corridor or outside to the playground – affecting the quality of discussion anywhere in the building.

Equally though it became clear rapidly that the Board, fighting hard to keep the school operating had retained a central group of exemplary teachers and administrators. To do so the executive officers of the Board had had for some time been forced to terminate the employment of all staff each afternoon and re-hire them the following morning in a bid to limit on-costs and other financial obligations. Fortunately this necessity had ceased with the improved numbers of children returning to school in February 1979 and 1980. Nonetheless the school remained ‘at risk’ financially.

It also became clear over the first few months that the Chairman and Board had now become really effective in governance, from the late 1970s when ‘battles’ had raged, meetings extended until 2 a.m., and committees met afterwards to formulate different plans. There was a group of ‘disaffected’ parents who sought to take control from the Board. In essence: messy, with potential for disaster.

With no experience of such matters, other than being permitted to attend The Armidale School Council meetings in support of the Headmaster, it took a long time to comprehend what had been accomplished by the Chairman, Deputy Chairman and Treasurer as Trustees, and the Board as a finally ‘united’ whole.

At The Armidale School SCEGGS the theme and operation of Council seemed to be ‘thrift and steadiness’, but with the door always open to demonstrably useful approaches or investments that would be pertinent to the boys’ very best interests. This approach, steady and ‘traditional’ as it seemed to the new observer seemed right, proven over almost a century of independent, Anglican Church related action. No question arose ever that the Council held TAS in respected trust.

Redlands started on the path to reconstruction in 1974 – 1979 through the single most important quality brought to bear by three current parents, their families, and some members of the Board as it solidified over time: altruistic, disciplined, selfless, focused governance with long-term vision but immediate action when required in the interests of enrolled children. Both TAS Council and the then SCEGGS Redlands Board – sometime known also as Council ­– both took an active interest in education and its arteries or capillaries, to the lasting benefit of students and staff. No better training ground for a Principal or Headmaster could have been found; no better example set of the unbreakable bond between students, staff, costs and revenue.

Now so many years later, watching always the available public information about independent and government operated schools across Australia, the evidence is that the same bond continues to govern the way of schools, the strength of schools, the service in education of children. At Redlands the close, sharp-eyed and comprehensive review of the balance sheet and other reports each month, ensuring the ratios of expenditure to known revenue were being maintained became commonplace for years, as should be the case. No ‘rushes of blood to the head’, where such may have occurred, went unnoticed or unchecked. It was the best of times for learning the essential principles of Headmastering in the independent sector. And the worst of times were well past in the 1970s.

And it was right for the school entirely.

PJ Cornish 2 Jan 2019.