From the Head of Boarding

Welcome to our boarding community for 2024. One of my focuses for our boarding community this year is around the Australian Boarding Standards.  

Boarding schools are now seen as caretakers of boarder wellbeing, with the non-academic program including the values, lessons, approaches, relationships, and communications that occur, becoming more important, especially for boarders who are far from their homes and/or cultures, like rural boarders and Indigenous boarders.

Boarding at Great Southern Grammar is about community, it's one of our points of difference living in the region and providing a place where your child can learn and live, while staying connected to home and where they grew up. 

The Oxford Dictionary provides several definitions for the word ‘community’:

• a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.
• the people of a district or country considered collectively, especially in the context of social values and responsibilities.
• a society, and
• the condition of sharing or having certain attitudes and interests in common.

As I look through the Governance of meeting the Australian Boarding Standards for GSG, it states "Schools are often being defined as ‘learning communities’ and boarding schools are reflected within most of the definitions above. Boarding schools are composed of a group of young people living in the same place with a particular characteristic in common (students of the school); they should have common and shared social values and responsibilities and they should share common attitudes and interests".

The view from Great Southern Grammar lead by our new Principal Mr Mathew Irving is our Boarding community is the heartbeat of the school, something the boarders are proud to drop in conversations when talking about their space. We are a school that has embraced its boarding culture, and our boarding community isn't running silo or independently of the day school. 

However, boarding houses are very specific and quite unique in how they care for, and work with, students, specifically in the provision of pastoral care to rural and Indigenous boarders.

Partnerships with our families and community members assist our staff at Great Southern Grammar in assisting boarders with feelings of isolation and homesickness. For our farming community, it's about us knowing your community, while for our Indigenous boarders, language barriers, cultural shock and post-school transitions are something we focus on. 

Above all, our paramount priority is the safety and welfare of boarders at Great Southern Grammar.

Mr Ashley Keatch | Head of Boarding