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Business View Oceania - October/November 2017
open for these members to call up,
and discuss issues, and seek advice.
An added benefit of ABSA is the strong
networking connections it provides
through its conferences, forums and
networking events. The association
manages a number of email groups
and publishes e-newsletters crammed
with news and updates.
“These kinds of interactions and ex-
changes of ideas and information is re-
ally very important for what can actual-
ly be quite a lonely job,” opines Stokes,
“And it’s critical for to us continue to
share industry knowledge across the
nation – things like what’s going on in
terms of good practice and innovation.”
Building boarding
ABSA continues to grow internation-
ally too, with boarding schools in New
Zealand and China enlisting the asso-
ciation for training and guidance. While
New Zealand does have its own ABSA
Kiwi counterpart, this counterpart is
currently entirely voluntary, and many
of its members just don’t have the
time. ABSA has since taken on some
of the mantle and will even start its
first run of training in Christchurch in
July of this year. Stokes’ influence has
been far reaching:
“We’ve also got members in Singa-
pore, and there are schools in Ma-
laysia, Thailand and Korea that have
shown some serious interest.
“In China we trained staff in a board-
ing school just out of Shanghai. In Sep-
tember, we’re going to spend some
time in India. There’s a big group of
English speaking schools there, so
we’ll be heading out to do some sup-
port work.”
When it comes to assessing and
raising standards, ABSA’s next step is
to create a review service. With this
service, a boarding school can invite
ABSA in for three to four days to re-
view their boarding program, to talk
about what they’re doing well, and
about what they can do better.