Scotch College

Donaldson’s legacy: a united and vibrant school

Words: Dr JIM MITCHELL • ARCHIVIST

To us he is no more a person now but a whole climate of opinion

—W. H. Auden, In Memory of Sigmund Freud.

Dr Francis Gordon Donaldson, Member of the Order of Australia, was born in Northern Ireland in 1944, and became Principal of Scotch College in 1983, aged 38, a choice that reflects the wisdom of the then Chairman of Council, Bruce Lithgow.

Donaldson’s greatest achievement is that we have forgotten how bad things were when he arrived.

At the time of his appointment, the school was tempestuous, riven and disheartened. The School Council had rebelled against the Church which had then dismissed the Council. Church and Old Boys had fought over the ownership of the school, waging a long and costly struggle in Parliament and in the Supreme Court. The new Council that emerged in 1980 was deeply divided, the first substantive motion before it being the deposition of the then Principal, Phillip Roff. The motion was not carried, but when Roff did later leave office in 1981, aged only 43, the controversy over his departure threatened to taint any successor. The whole Scotch community was polarised: staff, Old Boys, parents, boys. Morale fell. Donations dried up. The building program stalled.

Twenty-five years later, all that lies so very far in the past that it is hard to believe it ever happened. Today the School is united and successful. Morale is high. The Scotch community is proud and energetic. The building program is surely astonishing, and has been achieved without debt. Academic, cultural and sporting successes abound. Extracurricular activities range ever more widely. Prospective parents demand admission for their sons.

Donaldson is the first to protest that many people helped achieve this outcome, but the Principal’s key role made him the focus and fulcrum. He kept his feet while buffeted by many winds of conflict, and steered the School into looking towards future glory rather than dwelling on past bitterness.

Unfairly, the very longevity of Donaldson’s administration makes it liable to inertia, which is made even more likely by his increasingly sure touch in creating an enduring team of senior staff. To address this risk he deliberately seeks to stimulate and challenge the School; for instance by using Foundation Fellows, by appointing a Director of Educational Research and Development, and by twice revamping the Head of Year system untouched since Gilray.

Donaldson’s strategic choices have included pushing ahead vigorously with building and with information technology (and the educational changes it entails); keeping the School on one campus; keeping the School a school for boys; introducing team teaching; and encouraging research into the School’s functioning. While it is possible to argue against these strategies (that the money spent on building might have been spent in other ways; that his focus is more physical than social; that the School would benefit from a separate country site or from co-education), the school’s general mood is firmly to endorse Donaldson’s strategic decisions.

In length of tenure, he has overtaken Lawson, Gilray, Selby Smith, Healey, and Roff. He has even come within cooee of Littlejohn’s 30 years, though still well short of Morrison’s half-century.

He has led Scotch steadily, firmly and with distinction for two and half decades. Now he steps back to become part of our history, as our third-longest-reigning Principal. GS