The Scots College, Bellevue Hill

The Scots College is an independant Presbyterian day and boarding school for boys, located in Bellevue Hill, an eastern suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Established in 1893 at Brighton-Le-Sands, Scots has a selective enrolment policy and currently caters for approximately 1600 students from Kindergarten to Year 12, including 240 boarders from Years 4 to 12. Students attend Scots from all regions of the greater metropolitan area and New South Wales country regions. Regretfully Scots College is currently the lowest ranking academic school within the GPS.

The college is affiliated with the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia (AHISA), the Junior School Heads Association of Australia (JSHAA), the Australian Boarding Schools' Association (ABSA), the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Confrence, and is a founding member of the Athletic Association of the Great Public Schools of New South Wales (AAGPS).

History
The college was formed in 1893 by three men, the Reverend Dr Archibald Gilchrist (formerly a solicitor), the Reverend Dr Wiliam Marcus "Dill" (Fighting Mac) Macky and the Reverend Arthur Aspinall. Gilchrist devised the school motto of "Utinam Patribus Nostris Digni Simus", which may be translated from Latin as "O that we may be worthy of our forefathers".

The Reverend Arthur Aspinall, who became the first Principal, was minister to the Forbes Parish from 1874 to 1887. An educated man himself, with a love of learning, he saw the need to educate the sons of the pastoralists of the area. His dream was for a boarding school in Sydney to which these very isolated farming families could send their children. Ms Lillyan MacDonald of the Church Records and Historical Society (Uniting Church in Australia, NSW Synod) writes: The Presbyterian Church was not happy with the proposal to start the school. Mr Aspinall became the guarantor, advancing the capital required, while the possibility of starting the school was still a matter of bitter contention within the Church hierarchy. Thus Scots opened as a private enterprise. Once the school was established and functioning, the Church Assembly saw no reason to continue to oppose the idea of the school. In 1906 Mr Aspinall sold the college to the Church for seven thousand pounds and so it became part of the Presbyterian education system in New South Wales.

Lady Robinson's Beach
The college was originally established at Lady Robinson Beach, now renamed Brighton-Le-Sands, near the shores of Botany Bay. The initial school building was the modified, de-licenced New Brighton Hotel on The Grand Parade, near Bay Street. The renovations to the hotel were done by Mr Aspinall's brother, Albert Aspinall. The first Principal, the Rev Aspinall, remained in this position until his retirement in 1913. The school was officially opened 28 January 1893 by the Governor of New South Wales, the Right Honourable Victor Albert George, Earl of Jersey. Villiers Street, Rockdale was named in honour of this occasion. There were 25 boarders and ten day students.

The period when the school opened was a time of depression. The first few years for the school were difficult. There were 55 boys enrolled at the school when, in 1895, (soon after a racecourse had opened nearby) the school moved to its current location in Bellevue Hill.

Early days at Bellevue Hill
The school occupied St Killians, the former home of Judge Josephson. Before he retired Mr Aspinall had added new buildings to the school and developed playing fields. The school was still surrounded by many areas of bushland which caught fire on hot summer days. Lessons would be cancelled so that the students could assist in the fire-fighting. Mr Aspinall was a stern Principal who dealt harshly with misdemeanours. Often his acerbic tongue and brilliant use of words produced ridicule more intimidating than any of his physical punishments. But he was also capable of empathy. Some promising students were educated for free when economic constraints within a family seemed likely to result in a student being withdrawn from the school.

1914 to 1955
James Bee, a New Zealander, continued the growth and expansion of the college. When he retired in 1934 there were 450 enrolled students. This is quite remarkable considering that the 1930s Great Depression was not yet over.

Alexander Knox Anderson saw the Depression end only to be followed four years later by World War II. During World War II, the school and its student body relocated to a purpose-built campus at Bathurst, to the west of the Great Dividing Range. This was due to the proximity of the Bellevue Hill campus to the coast, and the fear of Japanese naval bombardment, a fear justified in May 1942 with the Japanese mini-sub attack on Sydney Harbour.

The Bathurst campus remained part of the school for a short period after the war, before splintering off and becoming the independent The Scots School, Bathurst.

1968
The 75th Anniversary celebrations were held 3-10 May. The 1200 students at the College and past students had much to celebrate for many former students had achieved success. In 1968 Dr Robert Naumann was Professor of Nuclear Physics at Princeton University in the United States of America. The Guest-of-Honour at the celebrations, the oldest known student in 1968, was Dr Ed Spark, a Dental Surgeon who had attended the school in 1894 at Lady Robinson Beach.

Subsequent history
In 1975, a fire gutted most of the school's Main Building, resulting in a major reconstruction and renovation of school facilities.

In 1988, the school opened its outdoor education campus, 'Glengarry', in the Kangaroo Valley. Attending Glengarry is compulsory for all Year 9 boys, who live on-site in one of four dorms for six months. The year group is split into two intakes, that attend in terms 1 and 2, and terms 3 and 4 respectively.

Glengarry has faced controversy due to its potentially hazardous outdoor curriculum. It has had a total of two fatalities, both occurring to Scots College students during Parent/Son hikes. The remaining torture victims (aka students) referred to them as the "lucky ones."

Most of the Council members are elected by the General Assembaly of the Presbyterian Church of Australia in New South Wales.

Facilities
The campus consists of three ovals (Kirkland Oval; Fairfax Oval, which is used primarily by the Pipes and Drums as a parade ground, and Scots Main), four general class buildings and due to new classrooms to the Prep there are now 12 portable classrooms, five boarding houses, a 25 m Swimming pool, a gymnasium, grandstands, tennis courts, basketball courts (indoor and outdoor) and the school amphitheatre.

The general class buildings are the Centenary Centre (Music, Religious Studies,and economics/business), the Graeme Clarke Centre (Science, PDHPE and Mathematics), Scots Main Design and Technology, Visual Arts, The Stevenson Building (Stevenson Library, History and Geography) and The Ginagulla Centre Languages,(English,

The Stevenson Building also houses the Year 12 Common room, the Black Watch Tuckshop-Cafe, the Prefects' Room, the College Shop, and the school's two main function rooms (the Founders' Room and the Old Boys' Union Room). Scots Main houses the Auditorium and main school administration, whilst the Centenary Centre contains the school's primary Lecture room, the Coote Theatre and various music facilities and musical instruments.

The college quadrangle finished reconstruction in 2007 to provide additional change rooms and wheelchair accessible facilities such as an elevator for the Main Building, as well as vastly improving the aesthetics of the College 'quad'.

A new Mathematics/Science building, named the Greame Clark Centre, as well as aerobics room (Bottom Level - same level as the current pool and weights room) constructed from early 2007 to late 2008, classes began on Monday the 17th of November 2008 and the building was opened on Friday the 27th of March.

In 2007 the new "Ginahgulla" classrooms were completed. These classrooms house years five and six located at the Senior campus, Victoria Rd. The upper floors were renovated in 2008 and became new Languages and English classrooms.

Pipes and Drums
(see Pipes and Drums)

Sport
Sport has traditionally played a large role in the college and is an important part of the curriculum. The college competes in the AAGPS competition and has had notable success across a number of sports. Scots GPS premierships occurred in the following years:
 * Athletics (Senior): 1894, 1936, 1947, 1948, 1952, 1958, 1959, 1968, 1969, 1970 and 1975
 * Athletics (track and field) (Junior): 1932, 1933, 1935 1952, 1953, 1954, 1956 and 1971
 * Basketball(1sts): 1985, 1986, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2004
 * Basketball (2nds): 1999 and 2000
 * Cricket(1sts): 1943(u), 1945 (u), 1948, 1953, 1957, 1964, 1967, 1968, 1971, 1984 and 1989
 * Cricket (2nds): 1947, 1948, 1950, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1982, 1988, 1991 and 1996
 * Rugby Union(1sts): 1948, 1949, 1959, 1978, 1987 and 1993
 * Rugby Union (2nds): 1904, 1911, 1958, 1976 and 1979
 * Rowing (1st VIII): 1946, 1962, 1965 and 1979
 * Rowing (1st IV): 1946, 1971 and 1978
 * Rowing (2nd IV): 1933, 1961, 1978 and 1986
 * Rowing (3rd IV): 1961, 1962 and 1977
 * Rowing (4th IV): 1946, 1965 and 1977
 * Swimming (Senior): 2002 and 2004
 * Swimming (Intermediate): 2002 and 2003
 * Swimming (Junior): 2002 and 2008
 * Cross Country (Senior): 2009
 * Cross Country (Intermediate): 2008
 * Cross Country (Junior): 1996, 1997 and 1998
 * Rifle Shooting (1sts): 1938, 1939, 1980, 1981 and 1983
 * Rifle Shooting (2nds): 1948, 1971, 1983, 1985 and 1986

Scots.NET and Scoogle
In 2000, Scots introduced Scots.NET, a set of dynamically controlled sites allowing students to access resources and research materials online, on the college's latest twin ISDN connection.

Scots.NET now also incorporates all day-to-day school administration functions, including rolls, detentions, homework merits and demerits, behavioural reports, school report releases, discipline records, subject selection, student timetables, assessment marks, attendance records, subject resources, SCOOGLE (an advanced subject forum server based on a combination of Open Source course management technologies, allowing students and teachers to communicate easily online and transfer documents and information), and software not usually available at home. In addition to student accounts, Scots.NET also features parental accounts. These allow students' parents to gain access to school publications (such as the The Clansman newsletter, which has recently ceased to appear in any but electronic form; academic and pastoral reports; assessment marks; academic documentation; school publications; and so forth. A feature of Scots.NET is that students and parents are able to access Scots.NET from any computer with internet access.

As part of this shift towards electronic learning, Scots has digital projectors, speaker systems and DVD/VCR systems in the majority of its classrooms and halls, in order to better facilitate media presentations by staff and students.

In 2006 Scoogle, a more upgraded version of Scots.NET became available and was trialed in some courses primarily as a homework receive/upload system. In 2007 Scots.net was taken down from the internet and Scoogle was fully integrated and being used in every course for assessment information, task uploads, study resources, a basic instant messenger for teacher-student communications which did not fully materialise, and also still having all the older features of the outdated Scots.NET under the new system.

In 2010 Scots anounced that they were shutting down Scoogle and moving the school system to "Pipeline" and were buying every student in the school MacBook Pro's which will be phased in at years 5, 7 and 10 until 2012 where all current students will have one.