Max Hector, CEO of ACPE, recounts ACPE re-start by Redlands 1997 and after

The company was dormant from 26 November 1997 until 31 December 1997.

 

The record shows (AGM SCECGS Redlands Ltd., June 1999) that the College achieved audited 1998: total revenue $2,514,788, expenses $2,137,570. Profit $377,329. Hence +15% for the year since purchase.

 

Further audited profitable years followed:

1999 $442,817.00, profit +15.1%.

2000 $520,066.00, profit +18%.

The profit trend continued until ACPE was sold by SCECGS Redlands Ltd. in 2004.

 

Strength came back through enrolment growth: 68 undergraduates in 1997; 368 in 2004. The recovery was strong, warranted, led.

 

Undergraduate enrolment growth continued in the time of ACPE Ltd:

2005:         617

2006:         784

2007:         896

2008:         895

2009:         998.

ACPE grew from that 2004 sale to be purchased by Study Group  in 2009/10. By that time the College welcomed some 1000 undergraduates for each Academic Year. Basic growth 2004 to 2009 was about 198%. The operational model was deliberately flexible, finance aware, profitable. Reinvestment followed.

 

ACPE returned to operational and commercial strength. The ‘history’ of the College, from Administration in 1997 to success and its accompanying commercially sound operations 2004, then to 2009 is a tribute to the understanding as much as to the ‘vision’ of the SCECGS Redlands Chair, Board and Management, followed by the Board of ACPE Ltd. The decisions taken and growth achieved ‘rescued’ an independent tertiary education institution, from being lost forever, and then re-developed it to a significant point of growth with stability. Many adult students benefited not least of whom were SCECGS Redlands Year 12 members who chose to go on to ACPE for the first of their tertiary studies years.

 

Purchase.

In a senior staff meeting in early 1997 a member who was a graduate of ACPE announced, very sadly, that on the evening before it had been announced ACPE at Sydney Olympic Park had been placed into voluntary administration with Arthur Andersen, located in North Sydney.

 

Discussions followed between the Chairman and the Headmaster, the value of ACPE to the SCECGS Redlands Limited integrated education model (Early Childhood to Tertiary Studies) being the central focus. Inquiries made, the SCECGS Redlands Board brought in early to decisive discussions, and eventually an offer was made by SCECGS Redlands Limited to acquire ACPE out of Administration.

 

Crucial to the approach was the support and active analysis undertaken by leading members of the SCECGS Redlands Board.

 

In November 1997 an offer was made, accepted, finalised. From January 1998 SCECGS Redlands Limited owned and operated ACPE in its building 4 Australia Drive, Sydney Olympic Park, with the subsequent relocation to 6 Figtree Drive achieved in 1999. The much larger building proved beneficial, the internal spaces allowing basketball courts, training facilities, lecture rooms, library, student recreation areas and other comfortable provisions.

 

Reason.

Apart from the drive to ensure historic, high quality education institutions not be allowed to collapse and disappear through want of effort, leadership and imagination the motivation to acquire ACPE as part of what became known as ‘The Redlands Group’ had particular Redlands’ reasons.

 

With SCECGS Redlands’ reconstruction from 1975, consolidated  from 1980 came a dynamic drive to formulate a layered model of education, unique in Australia but influenced positively from international sources, which could eventually contemplate integrated tertiary studies. Keeping in mind the foundation of Redlands the school in 1884 and its subsequent history, described in this website, the global rarity if not uniqueness of the plan of an education model from Early Childhood (3 and 4 year old children) to Graduate studies (18 or 19 years and after) is obvious. The underlying philosophy was to offer and deliver a variegated ‘liberal education’ available to males and females alike, in a single line; should he or she find the education satisfactory, learning personally focused, mainstream, in the post-Enlightenment Western tradition and should he or she fully wish to participate. Choice of present and future is always available, a core value of liberal education.

 

At the time of ‘bankruptcy’ and start of reconstruction in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, SCEGGS Redlands Cremorne operated successful Adult Education Programmes on the original 2.4 acre school on Military Road. Experience revealed that an onsite education and training service could be rendered to adults not directly connected to Redlands itself. The lesson and evidence were not forgotten.

 

Equally informative as the 1980s rolled out was the difficulty in finding and then appointing suitably qualified, suitably effective, ‘driven’ classroom teachers for the recovering school. The ‘pool’ of teachers who might apply for appointment to Redlands was essentially the same as for all schools in Australia: university Education Faculties. A newly graduated teacher brought to his or her appointment formal qualifications at various levels, ‘authorised’ by the universities, ‘influenced’ by the State, in some cases by Churches. Whilst such uniformity ensured comfort also with conformity in appointment, Redlands relied upon the individual teacher’s personal motivation and ‘life view’ to bring depth and difference, contemporary excitement and calm contemplation of current knowledge, to each student in each classroom.

 

Uniformity of thought was not a welcome influence in an independent school planning to offer more and to do more. It never could be welcome. Never should be welcome. ACPE, finely nuanced and influenced by the independent education thought of SCECGS Redlands, could become a source of betterment, nuance and enhanced dynamic for the teaching staff of the school. That was a plank in the overall platform, the ‘mission’.

 

Moreover the idea of research-based tertiary level professional extension training for staff of the school was paramount in forward planning, assisting employed teachers to polish existing skills whilst adding others. In the period from 1981, whenever funds allowed fees were paid directly to assist Redlands’ teachers to undertake courses, post-graduate studies and other appropriate training directly relevant to classroom practice at the school, and to the professional advancement of teachers.

The Redlands Scale (see AEA Commentary on website) became variously though not exclusively associated with such professional development.

 

Such was the quality of teaching in so many areas of SCECGS Redlands’ daily teaching life, with student results at public examination being thus advantaged whilst co-curricular and individual achievements in parallel were also noteworthy, a particular model of a “Redlands’ teaching method” emerged.

 

Philosophy in action at centre: through education and guidance some freedom of intellect, in parallel with individual thinking freedoms could be available to the child as the years added insight, value and perhaps in late education years, some wisdom. Then into adulthood.

 

Pastoral Care through effective education encouraged by highly intelligent, consistently improving, devoted teachers male and female alike, was evident. Education offered in partnership with students’ families was described and communicated, in some areas necessarily codified. Intentionally it reached well beyond the ‘any other school’ offering across the State, even across Australia.

 

Not at SCECGS Redlands the teaching ‘method’ of ‘prepare a year’s work once, then repeat twenty times’; use work-sheets; follow text-books; do as others do by rote. Rather the model argued for was a dynamic engagement, time after time, with current emerging knowledge. Then teach. ACPE was active in that model.

 

Surprising to some people, ‘Games’ (sport) figured strongly in the development of co-curricular activities in each school week and at times, in vacation times as well. A continuous influence in development of pedagogic policy on Games (Sport) was Howard Gardner (USA). The thinking was coherent, careful, cogent, student-centred.

 

In New South Wales the ‘Wednesday afternoon sport’ programme at government-run secondary schools seemed to be weak. In the Sydney Lower North Shore a casual observer could see local grounds being used in a desultory fashion by children poorly supervised, and at the skill level of ‘pastimes’ This was a lost opportunity in any school week or teaching model.

 

In the early 1980s, if not perpetually it was a truism that ‘physical education’ in schooling was not regarded by the teaching profession as central to a child’s school experience. Perhaps this was always a pervasive error. In the complete education made available as reconstruction continued, Redlands planned to mesh intellect with physical being for the child. This seemed logical, helpful, affirming, well-based in research and therefore an obvious improvement, a necessary step.

 

Persuasive among the many focused critiques of the 1980s SCECGS Redlands school experience was the dedicated, advanced teaching in Physical Education, Games and Fitness guided by the PDHPE curriculum and qualified Staff but indeed reaching well beyond that curriculum. Evidence from work done and research elsewhere – Marianne Frostig and others – indicated the unbreakable relationship of physical confidence to learning confidence. Early in 1982 a Frostig Teaching Area (balance and fun) was set up as part of the Junior School resources. With eyes on the wider implications of Frostig’s work across the student cohorts from Kindergarten to final school years, the physical education staff numbers increased as budgets allowed, until by the mid 1990s student choices in active Games and Fitness/Health pursuits were wide. They were also developmentally and educationally effective.

 

Of course most persuasive to those who had to guide the school’s reconstruction was the experience of witnessing the 6.30 a.m. ‘run for health’ by senior students leaving the school gates, the ‘run for fitness’ at the same time led by School Sergeants who had been trained in Physical Education, and the evening ‘indoor sports competitions’ across the year, as well as inter-school Games across Sydney and the regions, each Saturday of each season. And physical education staff participating in the music of the school, in pastoral care outreach, in vacation camps, in finding new ways to help.

 

A busy school, balanced academically, caring enough to ‘do more’. Who could fail to see the service, the possibilities for doing better in all aspects of school life, physical, intellectual, spiritual, emotional, personal?

 

Impressive. PDHPE bridged between the standard curriculum and the advanced learning available through the additional coherently related co-curricular programmes. Some staff who had graduated from ACPE stood out for their energy, allied with their willingness to be involved well beyond usual school classroom hours. They were not alone in such dedication; they too just seemed unified – unstinting - in their love of their work.

 

Therefore when the ACPE graduates on Staff at Redlands spoke, the Head of School and others listened. Hence when ACPE went into voluntary administration, its possible availability to become part of the Redlands Group, to provide direct input to teaching across a number of Disciplines at the school, and to be the platform for Teacher Extension in the Redlands’ manner, was immediately attractive.

 

Discussions also included future development of ACPE as a Teachers’ College in its own right, perhaps grasping the baton once held by the Guild Teachers’ College (amalgamated with Sydney CAE 1982, continuing as the Guild Centre, incorporated into the University of Sydney, 1990).  For ACPE and Redlands alike, the motto was “give and then receive”.

 

Discussions by the Board led to support in applying finance needed, details were finalised. The Australian College of Physical Education became part of the Redlands’ teaching world on 1 January 1998.

 

ACPE and SCECGS Redlands.

That January 1998 analysis revealed that the collapse of ACPE had been caused in part by the debt load created with the building of the new College on Australia Drive, occupied in 1995, but also by costs associated with a very low staff: student ratio. Morale at the College had obviously dropped badly during 1997, evidenced by the tone of Graduation 1997 attended by Mr Bruce Adams, Deputy Chair of the SCECGS Redlands Board (see main website).

 

There was serious work to be done under SCECGS Redlands’ guidance in order to bring the College back to commercial and academic viability.

 

Appointment of Mr Max Hector, after his working for some time in the SCECGS Redlands Foundation at Cremorne, was the key that opened the door to recovering strength in ACPE. Careful support by the Chair, Board and Management of Redlands itself was always dependable, and Max Hector took up the work as CEO at ACPE with excitement, energy and ‘business’ skill acquired during his years of work in retail and other commercial enterprise. An unwavering, sharp focus on revenue with controlled expenses, consequent profit allowing confident re-investment was essential. Max Hector brought that focus to the College, reporting monthly to the Board, responding to post-secondary students’ inquiries, delivering on promises made upon each enrolment form signed.

 

It was all very encouraging. The Board comprised a sub-set of SCECGS Redlands Ltd. Careful governance guided mission and vision. Max Hector and his small administrative group directed the daily activities in line with the Board’s discussions, then decisions responding to then ‘best practice’. They delivered professionally, with a ‘hands on’ daily approach. The Board noted that there was no ‘waste’ apparent at any time.

 

Informed and involved visitors to the Australia Street, Sydney Olympic Park campus revealed that the administrative team supporting experienced leadership was thoroughly involved in ensuring the reconstruction of the College. They welcomed undergraduates to the College, genuinely. ACPE became a much happier, well-shaped, gregarious but carefully disciplined teaching institution. It encouraged growth and advancement in its academic staff. It endorsed goals aiming at higher achievement across all the College’s activities.

 

ACPE to 2002/03.

From 1998 to 2002/03 ACPE improved, progressed and proved viable once again. As the Annual Accounts show, in context of SCECGS Redlands Ltd.’s  generous support and encouragement assisted by particular measures to assist in providing good quality facilities, equipment and resources, the College started to gain strength. Undergraduate enrolments increased. Graduation ceremonies started to reflect improved morale, continued belief by undergraduates in the potential of their own future, and the improving collegiality of staff.

 

At Sydney’s Olympics 2000 undergraduate and staff direct involvement was welcomed by the College. Keen interest in ACPE Olympians was of course encouraged. These included YVETTE HIGGINS Australian Water Polo Gold medallist, who threw the winning goal in the last second of the game to secure a win for Australia in the Olympic Games. She was then undergraduate Bachelor of Physical Education, Year 1; STEPHEN WILSON who won gold medals in the 4x100m and 4x400m relays in the Paralympics. He was then undergraduate Bachelor of Physical Education, Year 3;  MOHAMED HANIM represented his native
country The Maldives in Athletics, as a sprinter and coach ( Olympic Games). He was then undergraduate Bachelor of Physical Education, Year 3.

 

Sydney Olympic Park was a lively, “ACPE relevant” place to attend over those many days.

 

Among unknown risks to ACPE at the time was the ultimately fraudulent hiring of the ACPE College building, by private providers, for corporate hospitality throughout the Olympics. Retrospectively it was revealed that mismanagement by the providers who took out a temporary lease led to their financial failure. ACPE was denied its rightful payment for the lease. The lessees decamped to South Australia.

 

Failure of the lessees became news in the Sydney Morning Herald subsequently. While this was all disappointing expected ‘windfall’ funds therefore not flowing to ACPE, there was no fiscal damage to the College or its operations.

 

From 1998 to 2002/03, reconstruction of ACPE strengthened the College, but with success also it could redefine its mission, purposes and operational model. (Please see Max Hector’s commentary elsewhere on this website.)

 

In accordance with its enrolment promise to each undergraduate the College returned to providing informed, accurate academic tuition, ethical guidance towards career and work, support for any diagnosed ‘special learning’ needs. Above all it continued to provide respect for effort aligned with profession goals across all Degrees. All was clarified, became transparent, delivered on ‘contracts’ made between undergraduate and College. The times were marked by honesty, endeavour, results. These had been for the College a positive 5 years.

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From the very beginning in 1998 the plan was for expansion of academic and credential offerings.

 

However from the SCECGS Redlands Ltd. standpoint additional innovative development of ACPE as a more comprehensive Teachers’ College to offer Teaching Degrees and post-graduate studies in other curriculum areas and to train ‘in the Redlands’ manner’ had not occurred. Such was the pace of those years that the plan unintentionally did not mature: another five years would have seen the planning come to fruition.

 

The motivation for the planned expansion was, as has been mentioned previously the need to bring men and women no matter age, into the teaching profession with the goal of their working – perhaps initially only – in the independent schools’ sector of Australian education. This was recognised in discussions at SCECGS Redlands. The only way to achieve variety and a communicative cross-fertilisation in the Common Room was to welcome into the school fully qualified adults who had trained in different ‘jurisdictions’. Over many years among the most successful for instance were those who had undertaken their professional training and first teaching years in Canada; some also from the United Kingdom and the United States. Among the very finest teachers were persons who had undertaken studies, followed by initial training in Japan and who then converted their training in Australia before joining the staff.

 

Such was the pragmatic approach to bringing vital ‘plurality’ to thinking and teaching in the Grammar School classrooms and its co-curricular programmes. This was a conscious ‘employee search’ policy.

 

Motivation for this approach was the obvious evidence that teachers recruited after studying and training in Australian State teaching oriented modules or courses all offered, essentially, the same thinking and same teaching practices, methods. They brought a ‘standard’ pedagogy whereas it has been always desirable to be able to provide teaching from Early Childhood to University/College level informed by the individuality of the person. Why?

 

Teaching is personal to the teacher, but also should be to the student/pupil. This is not to train future teachers for ‘freewheeling’ classroom practice, not well based in pedagogical research or relevant psychology. It is to train for informed variety across a student’s school years, assisting a sense of personal ‘mission’ through exemplifying a personal ‘mission’. It is essential to welcome in the school a teacher’s freedom to establish a warm tone which will assist  in conveying content, encouraging understanding, establishing in students/pupils essential foundations for possible future wisdom.

 

Crucially it is to educate the neophyte teacher, the classroom practitioner, to a sense of service. This could well have been the

‘Statement of mission’ for ACPE over decades in a twenty-first century of enhanced development.

 

It was not to be. At some stage in 2003/04 the then SCECGS Redlands Ltd., Board decided to sell ACPE. The reasons are not known to the writer. The nexus with SCECGS Redlands Ltd and SCECGS Redlands itself was broken.

 

It followed that in 2004/05 ACPE Ltd., a newly established company, purchased ACPE as a going concern and set about continuing the College’s growth and encouraging its continued improvement.

 

ACPE 2004/05 to 2009/10.

On a memorable evening in mid 2004 Mr Bob Dunnet, formerly a long-time Member of SCECGS Redlands Ltd. Board (see Mementos and Memorabilia section of the website) rang the writer to advise that he had been approached by the Redlands’ Board to explore whether he would consider purchasing ACPE. He asked whether the present writer would wish to be a partner in the purchase. Peter Cornish confirmed that he would be so.

 

Negotiations proceeded, resulting in the sale of ACPE to ACPE Ltd., the Board of which comprised Mr. Dunnet, Mr.Cornish, Mr. John Lang OAM, Mr. Ben Dunnet, Mr. Joshua Cornish, Mr. Kim Kilroy, later Mr. John Kean. Mr. Ross Gurney of ACPE Accounts was Minutes Secretary. The CEO attended ex officio. In due course Mr. Cornish was elected Chairman.

 

Board diligence was disciplined, attention to the Accounts sharply diligent, policy development debated and recorded, philosophy debated regularly to ensure clarity of thinking. Performance of the College was assessed continually, as Max Hector’s commentary (see separately) confirms but the approach of the Board was strictly Governance to Management.

 

Problems arising were solved as swiftly as possible. Notable were monitoring of expenditure, capital expenditure widely across the College, building amenity for undergraduates, student disciplinary policies, and the long-term planning for long-term performance. The truth of governance and performance was affirmed: leadership, selflessly exercised, is the key to service and success.

 

Advice, guidance and professional documentation by the Academic Board Chaired separately from the ACPE Ltd Board were essential to the continued registration and accreditation of the College. On many occasions the College Board expressed appreciation and respect for the work of the Academic Board and its members.

 

ACPE took part in the University Games, pursued high quality professional practicum arrangements across Degrees, with particular emphasis upon Teaching Degrees. Employment outcomes for graduates from year to following year were endorsements of the attributes exhibited by ACPE graduates across all available Degrees and Diplomas.     

 

Graduation ceremonies became over time a celebration of accomplishment in tune with those of Australian universities. They entered, deservedly and deliberately into the great ceremonial tradition reaching back to Bologna in the tenth century. They highlighted the centrality of studies offered by ACPE, making particular reference to the power of physical education in the schooling experience of every child. The goal always was to honour the accomplishments of graduands as they completed their ACPE time, but also to make plain the expectations placed upon them as they left.

 

With the sale to Study Group in 2009/10 ACPE moved to join an organisation with some 70 or more centres globally. This meant that ACPE students would have consistent, identifiable global opportunities, should they wish to consider them.

 

At the hand over, the Chair of the ACPE Ltd. Board expressed lasting appreciation to all Directors, to the Academic Board, to Chief Executives, and Management officers. The years had proven to have exemplary productivity, the obligations of the College to its students carefully recognised.

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Review.

To have been involved in the SCECGS Redlands’ reconstruction of ACPE after its emergence from Administration, to have participated in its re-development and then its transition into private enterprise in the ownership by ACPE Ltd., was always satisfactory on many levels. Not least was ACPE saved from disappearing out of the world of higher education, but over the years it was provided with the opportunity to revive, recover, repair, redefine, and then to thrive. It was also brought back into the severely disciplined ambit of business: no ‘mission’> no goal> no productivity> no capital> no future. By example to each of its enrolled students and in many instances to its staff, the College sought to guide towards each lifetime having active purpose trending onward and upward. For others as much as self.

 

On a larger scale again, this recollection is written at a time of disarray in the Higher Education sector of national life: Covid 19 has decimated present and immediate future alike, the national economy has lost all momentum, and universities have lost a majority of their ‘international’ students who have been necessarily ‘locked out’ of Australia. A virus of despair is apparent in reports by all media, the universities reporting huge losses of revenue. And worse.

 

In writing Putting the Mass University out of its misery (Quadrant, Melbourne, September 2020) Peter Murphy compares the ‘balance sheets’ of the ‘Multiversity (Mass university)’ with the ‘Microversity’. He calculates the cost of educating a person in the Multiversity @ $27,000 per person per annum, whereas he calculates the same cost in the Microversity of 500 students @ $14,500 per person.

 

“All the while the multiversity is floundering like a beached whale. Governments can’t and won’t put it out of its misery. The mass university schtick remains attractive to voters, though that is gradually decreasing. The one useful thing that a government could do is to rewrite the regulations to facilitate the establishment of micro and meso-scale universities. If a minister for higher education wishes to be remembered, all that is necessary is to nullify three brief sections of the TEQSA regulations. Leave the rest to private initiative.” (Murphy p 23).   

 

It is striking now that ACPE 1998 to 2010, and perhaps well beyond, succeeded so well through active guidance and management essential in anything built on ‘private initiative’. Murphy again: “The idea is not to replicate the mass university – quite the reverse – but rather to create a ‘microversity’. That is, a small boutique selective institution for motivated and high-performing students that controls costs and is dedicated to serious teaching and research. Such an institution would not be simply “another” university. Every university created in Australia since 1950 has been a pale imitation of those that have come before. We do not need an even paler imitation of what already exists.” (p 19).

 

Some immediate reservations. Bond University on the Gold Coast Queensland has some 2900 to 3000 students per annum. It is a private enterprise institution. It would meet some criteria posited by Murphy. It does not seem to be a ‘pale imitation’ of the public universities of Australia. Bond University can of course explain itself.

 

Similarly ACPE at Sydney Olympic Park. However, ACPE was not 1998 to 2010 a selective higher education College. Rather the policy was to welcome and then support actively to graduation those who needed to study at the College. ACPE was comprehensive, as was SCECGS Redlands its ‘white knight’; in the productive, rewarding lives of those who walked through the gates of either lies affirmation, any justification sought, and of course: raison d’etre.

 

Those who reconstructed SCEGGS Redlands to become a leading co-educational Australian independent school 1973 onwards, reconstructed ACPE 1998 to 2010, established the High Country Campus followed by Snowy Mountains Grammar School in the 1990s, assisted reconstruction of Girton Grammar School Victoria in the mid-1990s, worked to found the Independent Schools’ (Athletic) Association (ISA) and helped widely across independent education- all asserted the efficacy of the independent/private education sector in Australia.

 

Influences encouraging such effort included the independent schools and colleges of the USA, the Career Colleges Association USA centred in Washington, the Charter School movement of the 1980s, Global Connections led by Peter and Isobel Pelham, recognised European influences such as the Freie Universitaet Berlin, and other leading independent education active models in Japan, Scandinavia as the ‘academy’ movement in the United Kingdom.

 

Individually the final structure of an education model and most importantly intention, Early Childhood to High Education (tertiary) achieved by SCECGS Redlands and SCECGS Redlands Ltd., and then ACPE Ltd., between 1973 and 2010 is unique in Australia, though foreshadowed also brilliantly in Japan after 1945 in the private sector, exemplified by the Ishida Education Group.

The structure needs to be replicated time and again, keeping firmly in mind however the arguments by Murphy in 2020 critiquing the current ‘multiversity’ problems. Measured size and unyielding ‘delivery’ in education are major keys to service and success.

 

The structure can provide a child to adult with his or her education ‘home’. With leadership based in veracity, independence, individuality, reason and thinking, aiming at educating for the best of the ‘human condition’, with renewal by and through deliberate design, such an audited continuum will serve well without becoming corrupted.

 

Peter Cornish

January to September 2020.