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“It’s distributed three times a year
and is the best boarding school journal
in in the world! We highlight the things
that are going on in boarding houses,
but we also give people professional
development tools that can help with
their job.”
True to its event driven roots, ABSA
holds a range of conferences for board-
ing focused employees throughout
the year. An example is one that usu-
ally starts at the beginning of March
called the ‘Take the Reins’ conference.
The event is designed to assist peo-
ple taking up boarding leadership po-
sitions. This conference covers topics
that would help monumentally in the
day-to-day activities of these staff cov-
ering common topic like dealing with
difficult parents, steps to changing the
boarding culture and how to support
staff.
“All of those sorts of key things new lead-
ers need to hear about,” quips Stokes.
“What’s more, we run a four day na-
tional conference on even-numbered
years, for general boarding staff – the
ones at the actual coalface - covering
a larger variety of topics. On odd num-
bered years, we run a two day confer-
ence in August for boarding house lead-
ers. People like the Heads of House,
Assistant Heads of Boarding, Heads of
Boarding.
“Over two days, they’re engaged in a
whole lot of wonderful deep learning
about positive change.”
ABSA developed the national board-
ing standard from scratch in a three
year project which involved educators
from around Australia. In the same
vein, the association has almost com-
pleted an accreditation scheme for
boarding schools so that they can ac-
tually say they are accredited against
voluntary standards.
Stokes is certain that in the future,
the standards will be accepted by most
Australian governments, followed by
them needing to mandate the stand-
ards, but at this point in time, adhering
to the standards remains completely
voluntary.
Connections and
collaborations
The rapid 100% boarding school
membership rate translates clearly
into the view that ABSA can do things
quickly and efficiently. Despite this,
Stokes found that what members val-
ued the most about ABSA and its ser-
vices, was the personal connection.
“As I said, both our jobs include a lot
of travelling to members, visiting and
training them. We make sure these
schools know us personally.”
“That we have that personal con-
nection with our members is a critical
touchpoint for us, it’s where we stand
out, so we work hard at keeping them
close.”
ABSA keeps the communication lines