To Parents | From the Chair

Dear Parents,

As the 2024 school year draws to a close, I sincerely hope you are able to reflect on a successful and happy Somerset experience for your family.

Somerset College can claim success in so many areas of 2024.

The completion of our $30 million-dollar Junior School expansion, multipurpose playing field, new carparks and roadworks – on time and on budget.

Academic results maintaining our standards of excellence as one of the top scoring schools in the State.

Excellence in Sport, Arts and opportunities for students to explore so many diverse areas of learning.

However, I am sure you agree with me, the most important measure of a student’s personal success is, are they happy?

As I have said many times, personal success of our students is not just a vision, it is from me, the Board of Directors, the Headmaster, his leadership team and our whole staff an absolute commitment!

There will always be challenges, you may not always agree with our decisions.

We can and will make mistakes. However, we will always strive to learn and do better.

However, I assure you we will always listen to you.

We want to hear from you!

To protect and care and educate our students, we need your communication.

Talk to us!

I see the job of giving our students their personal success as a partnership with parents. We cannot deal with problems not communicated to us. I guarantee you that any concerns, no matter how small or great, will be listened to.

Our culture and values and policies are well documented and established and practiced over the last 40 years.

But if you have concerns you don’t have to rush to a website. Talk to us!

I encourage respectful and honest communication. I assure you that you will continue to receive respectful and honest engagement.

Where concerning situations arise between students, we will always consider the interest and welfare of all young people involved. However, we have never and will never shy away from making the tough decisions to maintain our values and culture.

I thank our retiring Headmaster Craig Bassingthwaighte for his unwavering commitment to the protection and care and support of all our students and his enforcement of our values and culture.

I acknowledge the incredible support given to Mr Bassingthwaighte from Deputy Head Pastoral, Mrs Allison Foster and from Deputy Head Academic, Mrs Michele Sauer. Mr Bassingthwaighte, Mrs Foster and Mrs Sauer have the full support, confidence and appreciation of myself and the Board of Directors.

I’m sorry that is a lot of words!

However, can I ask you to just hold onto and commit to three simple words.

“Talk To Us”.

To guarantee to our students and to you the parents, the best education experience to our students we must of course run a successful business.

The fees that you pay are of course a direct investment by you in the success and happiness of your children.

It is our job to apply those fees wisely to manage the College and its economic sustainability.

As with all schools, an important and essential part of revenue is funds made available through the Commonwealth Grant Funding.

The Commonwealth Government assesses the funding based upon each school’s parents’ capacity to contribute (CTC) to school fees which results in a Direct Measure of Income (DMI). 

That assessment is carried out by the Commonwealth Government based upon the taxable income of parents.

The reassessment of the funding available is carried out when there is established to be an increased taxable income of the schools parents.

The Commonwealth Government is able to access taxation records of our parent group (and of all schools’ parents’ groups) to make their assessment.

The schools have no opportunity to make any input or submission about the assessment made by the Commonwealth Government.

Your Board sits down in November of each year to finalise the budgets for the following school year and importantly to determine the fee increases to apply.

When the Board sat down in 2023, they relied upon the same Commonwealth funding as for the previous year. That resulted in the Board being able to once again minimise the fee increase for the following year to 5%.

However, approximately 1 month later, without any warning, the College was advised that a reassessment of our parents’ capacity to contribute according to the DMI score had been made which resulted in a cut in funding for Somerset College for 2024 of $1.1million.

We are advised a further adjustment at the end of this year will remove another $500,000 in Government funding from Somerset.

Accordingly, from our budget forecast set in November 2023, we have lost Government funding from our revenue of $1.6m.

The Board has always endeavoured to minimise fee increases but also at the same time to maintain a sustainable and healthy balance sheet to allow us to continue to deliver to Somerset College, the very best.

The best facilities, the best and most committed and talented staff, the best and most valuable education programs. Indeed, over the past five years the average fee increase has been approximately 4.6%.

The significant drop in Government funding along with inflationary pressures in our economy, particularly with respect to general labour costs, have presented a challenge to the Board to prudently maintain a healthy and sustainable balance sheet for the business of Somerset College, without any compromise on the standards of excellence for our families and their children. The result will be an increase of the tuition fees for Junior and Senior school students in 2025 of approximately $2,300 per student.

I acknowledge and thank our Headmaster, Chief Operating Officer David Thornton and our Finance Manager Kylie Sherrington, for their diligence and hard work to help the Board to get to this position.

Please let me thank your Board of Directors who voluntarily give their time and expertise.

Thank you to our Deputy Chair Amanda Appel, Chair of Governance Penny Thurnwald, Chair of the Foundation Bede Young, Chair of Finance Jason Cordner, Peter Trimble, Simon Chan and Alisha Swain. I thank Mr Alex Woodthorpe for his service and continued valuable contribution as Deputy Chair of Storyfest.

I welcome to our Board Somerset parents Wayne Warwick and Phil Bathols for bringing not only a passion to serve but a wealth of business experience.

I also welcome Aaron Lavell, an Independent Director, who is well recognised on the Gold Coast for his business acumen and experience as Managing Partner of W.M.S Accountants and Advisory Specialists.

Our Headmaster of 16 years Mr Craig Bassingthwaighte retires at the end of this year. From day one, Craig has brought to Somerset College his experience, his knowledge, his passion and his absolute commitment to helping every single student achieve their own personal success. It has been my pleasure to work by Craig’s side. His energy and enthusiasm for Somerset College is relentless. His care and concern for our school has been constant. Craig, your legacy is the culture of opportunity, care and giving that you have built and which our new Headmaster, Mr Chris Ivey will gratefully follow and continue to develop.

Somerset College thanks you Craig and Kathy for your selfless service.

Parents, Staff and Students thank you for the honour to serve as your Chair.

Keep talking to us!

Enjoy a happy and peaceful holiday.