Dr Alec O’Connell
Headmaster
A community is nothing without its partners In the previous edition of Clan, I spoke about the importance of giving. Since that time, we held our online Give to the Gooch day, which was an incredible success and reminded us of the generosity of our community and why partnerships are critical to the future of schools.
football or cricket; you have to be smarter than that. Major projects should not just serve one part of the community. It is important to look for opportunities to share resources wherever possible; to recognise when to diversify; to bring others on board to enjoy the benefits.
Scotch has always been a school that has prioritised its community and, here, our partnerships are essential. We have longterm partnerships with our sister school, Presbyterian Ladies’ College, running cross-campus classes and collaborating on our Drama productions, and Balga Senior High School, where we provide peer-to-peer tutoring support. In June, we announced a new partnership with St Hilda’s Anglican School for Girls for a joint Rowing programme and welcomed a shared Head of Rowing, Paul Bolton.
Our Rowing partnership with St Hilda’s, which will see our soon to be refurbished Boat Shed used year-round, exemplifies this. Opened in 1914 for just 20 rowers, the Boat Shed has served generations of Scotch rowers and has seen our programme grow to encompass over 100 rowers. Thanks to our new licensing agreement, we are very proud to be working with St Hilda’s to expand the use of this iconic Scotch building, following the refurbishment’s completion in 2022. It is also important to recognise that due to the time and circumstances in which many Perth boys’ schools were founded, we have access to expansive playing fields. This is one of the reasons why we welcome collaborations with other schools and particularly girls’
Our partnerships enable us to expand our offerings; to tap into underutilised resources. You would never build a stadium purely for
schools. Rightly so, sporting programmes such as AFL, Soccer and Cricket, which historically were seen as mainly the domain of boys’ schools, have now expanded into girls’ sporting programmes. As such initiatives expand and grow, we have to look for opportunities to work with and support girls’ schools that may not have immediate access to the required playing fields or other associated sporting facilities. Our current relationships with PLC and St Hilda’s are invaluable in offering our students the chance to interact and form relationships with those of the opposite gender. Not only do our cross-campus classes with PLC enable us to expand our subject offering, but they are also an opportunity to further class discussions and expose our students to diverse perspectives. At Scotch, we recognise that women and men experience the world differently and that respecting others comes from understanding, empathy and experience.
Scotch and PLC students at the College
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