FROM THE CHAIRMAN AND THE PRINCIPAL

Scotch seeks to empower boys to find their interests, make best use of their talents and, in doing so, pursue lives of engagement, responsibility, purpose and service.

A Scotch education is founded on experience and rich traditions, strengthened with the fruits of reflection and research. The continuing development of our wonderful campus at Hawthorn is designed to support the School’s educational objectives.

Scotch’s educational strategy is premised on intimacy, relationships and engagement, and based on conversations of learning amongst boys and staff. By knowing each boy, we are able to identify and make the most of his opportunities, developing interests that can become passions and fostering habits of mind that will continue with him for life. The new Keon-Cohen Dining Hall will play a central role in achieving these outcomes.

The Keon-Cohen Dining Hall will sit in the centre of a precinct that will become very much the boys’ space; a space that they will own. It will be the Scotch agora: a meeting place, a marketplace, an informal collision space where students go for conversations that inform learning, help build confidence and self expression, develop skills of inquiry and questioning, and create identity and belonging.

The Dining Hall will be a place that will invite boys to wander in and out, as they meet, relax, chat, have a coffee, read the paper, go online, read articles, talk about what they’ve been up to, and discuss their work.

As in the past, the School, and the School Council, supported by the Foundation, will look to engage the Scotch Family to help deliver this important and exciting project.

The Hon Dr David Kemp AC (OS 1959)

Chairman, Scotch College Council

Mr I Tom Batty

Principal

A NEW PLACE TO MEET AND EAT

The Senior School Precinct will form a marketplace of collision and engagement for boys and staff at the very heart of our School.

It will be a home for the boys, their aspirations, conversations and collaborations. A place of enterprise, where opportunities are identified and explored, and solutions refined and brought to bear for the greater good.

The redeveloped Keon-Cohen Dining Hall will form the hub of this precinct. Boys and teachers will gather to meet and eat, and share news and ideas, as they take time away from routines and let their minds wander to all that might be possible.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Recent developments at Scotch have seen the School creating homes for rowing, music, drama, science, and design and technology.

The Keon-Cohen Dining Hall, and the surrounding precinct, will be a home for the boys.

The Dining Hall and Cafeteria will be a modern replacement for the aged tuckshop — a place where boys can share a coffee or juice, buy from a range of nutritious foods, or eat food from home in a civilised environment that encourages interaction and conversation.

SPACES AND FACILITIES

The Keon-Cohen Dining Hall and the Senior School Precinct are being purposely formed to embrace and enhance conversational learning at Scotch. The Senior School House Home Rooms will be located nearby to support pastoral care and the development of each boy.

The concept extends the Keon-Cohen Building to the west, allowing for a large refectory dining space. It incorporates a canteen kitchen within the existing eastern end of the building, and introduces a part mezzanine. The project also includes associated landscaping to create an open square where conversations can continue outdoors.

The Dining Hall will also be a gathering area and function place for the Scotch Family during after school hours.

PRECINCT CENTREPIECE

The Keon-Cohen Dining Hall will form the centrepiece of a new student precinct in the Senior School. It will interplay with everything that sits around it, including the square, the House Home Rooms, the Main Quadrangle and the Sir Zelman Cowen Centre for Science.

STUDENT FOCUSED

Scotch Senior School boys have been restricted to outdoor spaces at recess and lunchtime in all weather conditions.

The creation of a facility for boys to meet and eat in a civilised and respectful manner is well overdue. This will be their space. It will empower our boys with responsibility, opportunity and voice.

WELLBEING, FOOD AND LEARNING

The School is committed to providing nutritious and appetising food choices for students and staff alike. This project recognises the social benefits of good food, and the rituals associated with food have always been important in creating community — the word companion is derived from Latin for ‘someone with whom we break bread’.