2 minute read
From the Chairman
With Haileybury passing its 130year milestone during February, the School’s rich and varied history, current era of excellence and optimistic future have much to make our community proud of. However, its ‘foundation’ all those years ago was more akin to a small business ‘start-up’, privately owned and operated, rather than one underwritten by a religious body or wealthy endowment, like many of today’s prestigious schools were gifted. Starting a new school to educate the growing Victorian middle class, just prior to what became the bank-busting economic depression of the 1890s, came with both high risk and return – evidenced by the long list of similar ‘start-up’ grammar schools from that era whose history was cut brutally short.
The contrast in how Haileybury and the other great world schools of today were originally founded is instructive for two main reasons. Firstly, it reminds us how our School’s success in surviving, and now truly thriving, was not through being gifted land and endowment to secure its future in perpetuity, but through a combination of academic excellence, community support, entrepreneurial endeavour, resilience and astute financial management.
As such, it begs the question: if the School’s current level of excellence is worth preserving for future generations to benefit from – and perhaps even into perpetuity – surely now is the time to ‘re-found’ it and build the endowment that it was not blessed with 130 years ago? I sincerely hope that you join us on this journey, both now and over the years to come.
Secondly, it is instructive because it reminds us of the core purpose of why many of today’s famous schools were themselves founded. It can so easily be forgotten that their original charters stipulated the education of local townspeople, funded by the original endowment, not those from wealthy backgrounds, who arrived later: this was the birth of the academic scholarship. So, if the endowment created through the Haileybury Foundation is the ‘refounding’ of this School, then one of its core purposes must surely be to support scholarship places for those students who would otherwise not be able to attend: the gift of changing young people’s lives forever.
Through the generosity of our donors, to whom we are so grateful, 22 Foundation scholars excitedly began their 2022 academic year at Haileybury. In addition, many campus building projects have been completed through our Building Fund and we have a combined corpus and bequest register of over $15 million. In many ways, this marks the ‘end of the beginning’ for our Foundation – like the School itself, we began with humble roots in the last decade and have persevered and grown – throughout 2022. I look forward to sharing with you our strategy for this current decade.
Please read on, enjoy and be inspired by this year’s Haileybury Foundation Impact Report.
