In Touch Again after Years 'Away'

Personal Letter from PJC to Members of the SCECGS Redlands Company: September 2019

To: Members of SCECGS Redlands Ltd.

From: Peter Cornish, erstwhile Head of SCECGS Redlands.

Dear fellow Member,

I write personally to you because I must. I write personally to ask you to consider carefully all that is being asked of you in the Notice of Meeting and proposed Company Constitution to be considered at the Extraordinary General Meeting.

What has caused me to write?

I read the 16 September 2019 letter to us all from John Lang OAM, Bruce Adams and their reflecting the view of the late John Roberts who passed away last week. If only from respect but in my case also admiration I write to support their call for a much better approach by the present Chair and Board to making a much better SCECGS Redlands Ltd. Constitution for the next fifty years. The Company and therefore the School itself need the best. As the letter makes clear this is not the case with the proposed Constitution. The proposal is inadequate; it does not encourage the continued momentum, the leadership by SCECGS Redlands itself, so apparent in the non-government schools since Redlands’ strength started to return. It agrees external control of the Company and Board when absolute independence with absolute responsibility should be the goal.

How could the proposal of the EGM be so wrong? It dismantles future possibilities.

I worked for and eventually with John Lang, Bruce Adams, John Roberts and the then Board for some 21 years as Head of SCECGS Redlands As a result I came to understand what they and their families had done in the 1970s to make survival after catastrophe for SCECGS Redlands possible. I came late to the struggle, being appointed from May 1981 after 31 hours of interview and prayer. I little grasped how ‘difficult’ I was reputed to be, but did grasp that the Chairman, Deputy Chairman, Secretary and Board were prepared to take necessary risk.

As I became familiar with the situation of the School in 1981 and started to learn what headship should mean, I recognised that the three men and their families had taken much greater risks before me and my family.

Anyone living in Sydney in the period 1973 to 1976 could not fail to know of the collapse of the Anglican Girls’ Schools in NSW; the media reports were ‘front page’. Some famous schools were destroyed. S.C.E.G.G.S. Redlands as it was officially known, famed and revered, was to be closed and the real estate sold. Some 680 ‘Redlands girls’ were to lose their school. Accepting the request of parents of those girls John Lang, Bruce Adams, John Roberts and their families strove to stop closure and sale; they provided their family homes as security to allow some financial arrangements to be made. The families were frightened by the consequent dangers, but they all kept going.

SCECGS Redlands Ltd was founded to which these three men, with RJ Pegus and C Goldberg were subscribers. They negotiated purchase of key parts of the school that were needed to keep it operating. The ‘new’ SCECGS Redlands did not close. The girls, and then boys continued to attend their school. Teaching and learning went on. Teachers were ‘terminated’ each evening and re-hired each following morning to limit financial liabilities. Superannuation for all staff had been lost in the collapse. Yet the remaining girls found their teachers waiting for them as the next Term commenced. Their school community proved its resilience, against desperate odds.

In March 1980 after protracted negotiation, described by the three men in the July 2019 video-recorded discussions entitled Our Modern SCECGS Redlands: all for the children, soon to be available, the Company purchased SCEGGS Redlands with entitlements and very reduced school grounds and buildings.

Worryingly by the end of the 1981 financial year, SCECGS Redlands was still just ‘breaking even’.

However so strong was the recovery of those early 80s years that by the Centenary 1984, through enrolment growth, very fine education progress, and positive parent attitude the initial financial obligations were repaid. The ten year ‘probation’ insisted on by the Diocese commenced.

By 1994, the school had enrolments of some 1350 girls and boys with a persistent Wait List, a staff: student ratio of approximately 1:15, and significant assets well beyond those of the former SCEGGS Redlands. All financial obligations of the purchase were complete. Growth continued.

During those years I saw the strength of the Company and Board increase, marked by determination, business acumen, discipline, constructive formality and harmonious mutual regard typified by the tone of each carefully presented Annual General Meeting. Law, protocol, courtesy and practice were all observed closely, exemplified by John Roberts’ public reading of the AGM Minutes to close each meeting and ensure all present comfortably concurred. Each AGM was complete in itself. The new ‘school year’ started the next morning.

Subsequently when I left Redlands in 2003 I decided to stay far away, allowing ‘new blood’ to bring new energy to the task of continuing to build and improve continuously. I chose to let my Company Membership lapse; I chose to apologise for Form Reunions, because each belonged to the Form Members, not to the former Head of School. It took a long time to accept the generous invitation of the Company and Board to put my name on a building. Distance was essential. Monuments unnecessary.

However as a matter of interested habit each year I analysed the Higher School Certificate results available in the public domain. IB results are not publicly available other than in local press reports. By 2016/17 I was dismayed as I had been earlier to read in the Sydney Morning Herald and other print media that SCECGS Redlands HSC results had slid to be ‘ranked’ 148th or 149th of the 150 NSW schools reported by analysts. Internet analysis reflected the same position. Subject choice analysis and performance added nuance. Even allowing for some media ‘bias’ against non-government schools, this situation was truly appalling. How different from the late 1980s and through the 1990s.

When I looked at other HSC/IB choice schools of similar cohort size I saw them being reported in, say, the ‘top 40’ schools in the HSC results. I could not understand how such outcomes – results – could occur at SCECGS Redlands. ‘Media’ carried no reports each January of the ‘blending’ of HSC with IB results; there was no persistent follow up in the major ‘media’ from SCECGS Redlands. I found this incomprehensible.

Therefore I attended the SCECGS Redlands AGM 2018, carrying proxies, in order to ask questions. The AGM was unrecognisable. Conducted in a side chamber of the Roseby Library, from a lectern, with minimal reports, with contentious issues in Director elections leading to moments of unseemly patronising with resultant anger, and with public disrespect being shown some former Directors including a former Chairman, that AGM was threatening to the Company and school I had formerly known. In 2019 the AGM on 29 April was of similar character. The harmony of the known past was gone, the concentration on outcomes, results, reduced. Was this really evidence of some ‘new world, new values’? I distrusted responses to my questions. I did not find solace in being told that SCECGS Redlands now is “above industry standard”. This was not good enough. I wrote immediately afterwards to the Chair to register my deep concerns.

How then now to respond?

In the period from 1976 onwards the goal of Company and school was to be the best possible, to enhance co-education as an education value in itself, to follow the guide of “look outward to see better inward”.

Therefore in those years SCECGS Redlands found the way to:

- improve both school curriculum and performance while exceeding State requirements. For the child to become adult;

- purchase apartments on the perimeter of the school grounds and change them into facilities for staff and student use;

- build the award-winning Lang Building gymnasium and undercroft;

- introduce the International Baccalaureate, as the second IB school in Australia, the Diploma to be available by choice with the HSC or as an alternative, available to all Redlands’ students. There are now 192 IB schools in Australia.

- purchase Cremorne Girls’ High School from the NSW State Government, in 1989/90 to allow student enrolment to reach 1350 in 1990 and continue to grow;

- establish Redlands House early childhood education model and facility;

- establish Redlands House North Harbour as a first stage in Northern Sydney outreach;

- gain parent support to such an extent that the High Country Campus Jindabyne was donated, ‘working bees’ following to establish benchmarks for practical parent involvement;

- with local parents in the area founded Snowy Mountains Grammar School linked to the High Country Campus to integrate both into SCECGS Redlands to be part of total curriculum both academic and co-curricular;

- purchase a refurbished but surplus Canberra demountable hospital, to be trucked to Jindabyne and Cremorne as educational and residential facilities. This all came about because of unity between Board and parents at SCECGS Redlands.

- purchase the Australian College of Physical Education from Administration, thereby extending Redlands’ educational choices for its community from Early Childhood to specialist Degrees; teacher extended training was part of this opportunity;

- through private philanthropy and again parent action build the Military Road Pedestrian Bridge with lifts, to “join the Lots” and make safer all student traffic;

- expand the Games and Co-curricular opportunities for SCECGS Redlands’ girls and boys, across 18 Games and wide Drama, Music, Dance and other high quality creativity choices;

- maintain sound accounting and auditing procedures;

- sustain sound School Fee levels whilst carefully providing generous funds for Staff remuneration and for resources.

The long-term goals of the late 1970s, early 1980s, symbolised by the retention of Latin from 1978 as an available mainstream study when it was considered ‘out of date’, were always debated at the Board. The goals were coherent, child-centred, family oriented, prudent, measurable on international scales, and mainstream in the Australian context. They pointed to future development, to continued innovation and improvement. They led to education enrolment across the ‘Redlands Group” as it became known, of some 2000 children and young adults.

These accomplishments of Company and Board with and for SCECGS Redlands, were exemplary. They gave rise to imitation throughout non-government schools, to their betterment and on occasion salvation.

In recent years Redlands House Balgowlah North has been closed; ACPE has been sold; Snowy Mountains Grammar School has been divested.

Underpinning all the accomplishments was the self-disciplined energy, drive, measured risk-taking and always insight of the Chairman and Board. Harmony prevailed because the school, supported by the Company and Board together, had survived and thriven in reputation as in finances and assets. I saw happily for the nature of SCECGS Redlands entirely that the Board was guided by not only the Motto from Matthew 5 (15-16) but also by Matthew 18(1-10) and Luke 18 (15-17). It was utterly admirable in philosophy, purpose, direction, commitment and decades of service to quality educational ideals informed by Christian precept.

The years 1973 to 2003, the latter being my final year of remunerated involvement were years from survival to strength. To have been associated closely with the idea of SCECGS Redlands and its new development from fractured foundations still remains a professional and personal privilege not to be forgotten.

How shocking it is therefore to think now that the Company and Board in the70s,80s, 90s and early 20s – my period of knowing from within – was characterised by strength allowing endless encouragement, where comparably in recent years as seen at AGMs there is weakness needing to compel. Distrust has become the consequence. Why has the agenda changed?

The future SCECGS Redlands Ltd and the exceptional co-educational school together need the platform of a Constitution that requires and provides independence of mind, planning, ethos, action and accountability aimed solely at exceptional education for the individual child. From 1976 the school revived to give every opportunity for that independence to inform everything and encourage the best. The next Constitution should offer the same. As presently proposed and as the letter of 16 September 2019 from John Lang OAM, Bruce Adams and posthumously John Roberts advises, it does not.

Respectfully I ask you to consider closely that letter from those who have worked voluntarily for the school as parents, Directors and grandparents for more than fifty years, and also look carefully at all that is proposed by the current Board.

Help the future. Seek a strengthened independent Company and Board to guide SCECGS Redlands through the next decades.

Yours sincerely,

Peter J Cornish

Wentworth Falls, NSW.

18 September 2019.