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| Scotch College | |
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| Latin: Deo Patriae Litteris ("To God, for Country, and for Learning")[1] |
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| Established | 1851[2] |
| School Type | Independent, Single-sex, Day and Boarding |
| Denomination | Presbyterian[3] |
| Key People | Mr. I. T. Batty (Principal) Mr. I. J. Savage (Vice-Principal) Rev. James Forbes (Founder) Mr. David Crawford (Chairman) Rt. Rev. Graham Bradbeer (Chaplain) Dr. F. G. Donaldson AM (Immediate Past Principal) |
| School Fees | AU$17,139–19,856 p.a (Day 2007) AU$33,471–34,188 p.a (Boarding 2007)[2] |
| State Ranking (VCE) | 17th (2005) |
| Location | Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia  |
| Coordinates | Coordinates: |
| Enrolment | ~1,800 (P–12)[4] |
| Colours | Cardinal, Gold and Blue[1] |
| Homepage | www.scotch.vic.edu.au |
Scotch College, Melbourne (commonly referred to as Scotch) is an independent, Presbyterian, day and boarding school for boys, located in Hawthorn, an inner-eastern suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
The College was established in 1851 as the Melbourne Academy, in a house in Spring Street, by Reverend James Forbes, of the Free Presbyterian Church of Victoria.[5] It is the oldest surviving secondary school in Victoria[2][4] and celebrated its sesquicentenary in 2001, for which it commissioned from author Dr. Jim Mitchell an official history, A Deepening Roar. Today Scotch caters for approximately 1,800 students from Prep to Year 12, including 170 boarders from Years 7 to 12.[4]
Scotch is a founding member of the Associated Public Schools of Victoria (APS),[6] and is affiliated with the International Coalition of Boys' Schools,[7] the Junior School Heads Association of Australia (JSHAA),[8] the Australian Boarding Schools' Association (ABSA),[4] the Association of Independent Schools of Victoria (AISV),[3] and the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference.[9]
In 2001, The Sun-Herald ranked Scotch College first in Australia's top ten boys' schools, based on the number of its alumni mentioned in the Who's Who in Australia (a listing of notable Australians).[10][a]
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Scotch College was founded 1851 by the Reverend James Forbes, the first settled minister of the Presbyterian Church in Victoria. It opened under the name of the Melbourne Academy, in a small house in Spring Street,[5] opposite the Royal College of Surgeons,[11] with Robert Lawson, a Scot from Edinburgh University as the first Principal.[5] Sadly, in the year the Melbourne Academy was founded, Forbes had contracted a chronic ailment to the trachea, and he subsequently died six weeks prior to the schools official opening on 6 October 1851.[12][13] The Reverend William Miller who succeeded Reverend James Forbes at John Knox Church became the founding chairman of the school council.
On 19 January 1852, the school moved to a rented premises at 99 Spring Street, on the corner of Little Collins Street, before relocating to its own site at Lansdowne Street, East Melbourne on 10 January 1854.[11] Scotch moved to the current site at Hawthorn in 1916.[12]
Scotch College has had a total of nine Principals with the introduction of Tom Batty in the second Semester of 2008.
The current Principal of the School, Mr. I. T. Batty was previously a Housemaster at the prestigious Eton College in the United Kingdom.
| Period | Details |
|---|---|
| 1851 – 1856 | Mr. R. Lawson[5] |
| 1857 – 1903 | Dr. A. Morrison[14] |
| 1904 – 1933 | Dr. W. S. Littlejohn[15] |
| 1934 – 1953 | Dr. C. M. Gilray[16] |
| 1953 – 1964 | Mr. R. Selby Smith |
| 1965 – 1974 | Mr. C. O. Healey |
| 1975 – 1982 | Mr. P. A. V. Roff |
| 1983 – 2007 | Dr. F. G. Donaldson AM |
| 2008 – Present | Mr. I. T. Batty |
Although people may mistakenly associate Scotch with the Uniting Church, on 3 May 1977, when the majority of the Presbyterian Church of Australia and its constituent state churches participated in the forming of this new denomination, the Property Commission of the Presbyterian Church gave the school to the smaller, and more conservative group of Presbyterians that emerged from the split. As Scotch had no say in this decision,[17] legal action was taken to try and overturn the allocation, however the action was unsuccessful.
Scotch is separately incorporated with a Council which is made up of three groups; Old Boys (1/3) nominated by the Old Scotch Collegians' Association, Presbyterian Church of Victoria nominees (1/3) and "members of the Scotch family" nominated by council members from associations including the Scotch Parents' Association and Scotch Foundation. Members of the School Council currently include:
The school's main campus is 27 hectares (67 acres) in size, and is located in suburban Hawthorn, on the banks of the Yarra River.[18] Sporting facilities include three cricket/AFL fields, one rugby field, 18 tennis courts, an outdoor basketball court, two soccer fields, a synthetic surface hockey field, a climbing wall, 25 metre heated indoor swimming and a diving pool, three gymnasiums, a weights room, three squash courts, and an observatory. Since the school is situated on the banks of the Yarra River, the school has rowing and boating facilities located within its grounds including a Fours shed, and an Eights shed as well as a club room, changing rooms, and weights and Ergo rooms.[18]
The school also has a music and drama building named the James Forbes Academy, the first stage of which was opened in 2002.[18] The academy includes computer music rooms, private music lesson rooms, an orchestra room, and other recital rooms. The second stage was opened in 2005, and includes two theatres, each seating 400,[18] one built for musical performances and the other for drama. The building also includes a further performance area for smaller audiences, as well as drama and communication studies classrooms. The next major infrastructure project for the school involves the renovation of the science and technology block, the current facility being more than forty years old.
In addition to the Hawthorn property, the School has 80 hectares (198 acres) of forest in the hills at Healesville east of Melbourne, and a residential seaside property at Cowes on Phillip Island, which is the site of a one week orientation camp for Year 7 students, as well as numerous other camps. A lodge for the use of boarders has been built near Mansfield, 130 km northeast of Melbourne.[18]
Scotch regularly participates in debating, competing in the Debaters Association of Victoria Schools Competition. Each season, the school hosts the Hawthorn region of the Schools Competition. In 2008 the First Debating Team were the State A Grade Runners Up, while the school was also runner up in the State British Parliamentary Debating Competition.[19] In 2005 and 2007, it took part in debating tours to the United Kingdom, where representatives from the school competed in debates against schools including Eton College, The Leys School, Westminster School and Dulwich College.
"Services", extracurricular activities which are compulsory for students in Years 9-12, include Cadets, Scouts, Sea Scouts, Sports First Aid, Pipe Band, Military Band, Outdoor Program, Outdoor Expedition Group, Social Services, and Junior Sport. Most of these activities involve at least one camp each year, and in the case of social services, weekly interaction with local community organisations assisting the elderly, blind and deaf among others.
The Scotch College Cadet Unit is the largest and longest running service the school offers. Initial entry is into the two main recruit companies, each of which are broken down into three or four platoons (subject to the number of enrollments). In later years, boys can join the Support Company, which consists of Mountaineering, Boating, and Engineering units, or the Signals platoon. Each year there is a three day bivouac and a five day main camp in the Grampians. The annual cadet tattoo is a formal ceremony at the end of the year which includes all members of the unit. Thousands come to watch the tattoo, which is usually presided over by a high-ranking member of the Australian Defence Force. Every year, members of the unit march in the Anzac Day parade through Melbourne.
Yearly, the student body actively raises funds for various charitable causes. The most prolific activity recently was the Kapumfi Project which commenced in 2005. Originally intending to donate towards the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the school received replies from international aid agencies stating that they were being flooded with donations from around the world, and that their money would be better spent elswhere. Thus, Scotch entered into a partnership with World Vision to assist in Africa, raising in excess of $200,000 to construct a new school in impoverished Zaire.[citation needed]
Yearly the Senior School undertakes a 24 hour hike to raise money for charities. The furthest distance ever traveled is 150.8 km in 24 hours. This hike raises in excess of $15,000.
Scotch College competes in the Associated Public Schools of Victoria (APS) league in Athletics, Badminton, Basketball, Cricket, Cross Country, Australian Rules Football, Hockey, Rowing, Rugby, Soccer, Squash, Swimming and Diving, Table tennis, Tennis, Volleyball and Water Polo. In 2006, the school jointly won the APS Australian Rules Premiership, the First VIII Rowing (Head of the River), and the VSRU Open Grade Rugby. It was the fifth time in six years that Scotch had won the Rugby first XV's, and the third consecutive year it had won the Head of the River. It won a fifth consecutive Head of the River in 2008.
Several players from the school's First XVIII have been drafted by AFL clubs in recent years. Such players include Campbell Brown, Nathan Djerkurra, Edward Barlow, Nicholas Smith, Lachlan 'Big Dog' Armstrong and Cyril Rioli.
Scotch College is famous for having played in the very first recorded game of Australian rules football.
The Cordner-Eggleston Cup is competed for each year by the first football teams of Melbourne Grammar School and Scotch College. It commemorates the first recorded game of Australian Rules Football, which was played between the two schools on 7 August 1858, and is today commemorated by a statue depicting the game outside the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The first game ran for three days, over three consecutive Saturdays, and each team selected an umpire: Melbourne Grammar chose Tom Wills, one of the inventors of the code of Australian Football; Scotch chose Dr John Macadam. By the completion of the third day, the match had resulted in a one-all draw.[20]
In recent years historians claim to have found evidence of earlier matches, and subsequently the origin of the game remains one of the more contested areas of Australian history. Both Melbourne Grammar and Scotch have acknowledged the ongoing research of historians, with Tim Shearer of the Old Scotch Collegians Association, and a former AFL umpire, explaining to The Age that the College is "careful to say we don't dogmatically claim this was the first game of Australian football and that there are differing views which we respect. But we do like to say that this is the first recorded game by two teams who still exist today."[20]
The school has twelve senior school houses which are named after former headmasters and teachers.
Each year the twelve houses compete for the "Cock House" trophy by taking part in various events including Summer and Winter house sports days, house chorals, house swimming and diving, house cross country, as well as chess, debating, and public speaking tournaments. The sporting competition ends with the athletics events held on Family Day, but house points can also be earned via other activities such as fundraising.
On "The Hill", as the boarding precinct is known, boarders are divided into three houses, named Arthur Robinson, McMeckan and School. The boarding houses also participate in an interhouse tournament during the year, the Wedderburn Cup. Activities include cycling, tennis, swimming, diving, Australian Rules, soccer, tug of war and touch rugby.
Alumni of Scotch College, Melbourne are known as Old Boys or Old Collegians, and automatically become members of the schools alumni association, the Old Scotch Collegians Association (OSCA).[21]
Academic research of Who's Who in Australia (a listing of notable Australians) showed that Scotch College alumni were listed more often than those of any other school.[22][23][10] Scotch is the only school whose alumni have held each of the offices of Governor-General, Prime Minister, Chief Justice of the High Court, Head of the Australian Defence Forces, Governor, Premier and Chief Justice of a Supreme Court.[citation needed]
Scotch has educated more Governors-General of Australia (three) and Australian State Premiers (eight Premiers of four different States) than any other Australian school.[citation needed] On the other hand, Scotch also educated the pioneering Australian anarchist John Arthur Andrews.
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