publication

18 “We agreed that we needed to provide this ser- vice for all boarding schools. He and I formed the association, he was my founding chair, and we carried on from there.” From those sparks of a voluntary group of con- cerned boarding staff, ABSA was formed. Every single boarding school in Australia is now a member. “In 2008, I sold the concept of the association to Principals and Heads of Boarding through the country,” Stoked explained, “I highlighted what we’d already achieved, how we’d united so many schools already, and pushed what a great service we could provide. “We probably got about 80% of the country’s boarding schools joining in ABSA’s first year. Now to me, this was quite remarkable, I was as surprised as anyone.” THE SPECIFICS In terms of the day-to-day, ABSA is actually only run by two staff, Stokes himself, and his general manager Thomas Dunsmore, and the pair have an administrative trainee to aid them. The job of ABSA, is to support boarding schools in the best way that it can. Stokes’ and Dunsmore’s jobs involve a great deal of them training boarding schools. Stokes himself helped with the updat- ing of ABSA’s ‘Duty of Care’ workbooks, authored by Hawkes, books which are a part of ABSA’s Duty of Care course (alongside additional work- shops). The association trains around 800-1000 people each year, with workshops being a key part of Stokes’ role. Stokes goes further into the kinds of services ABSA provides relishing ABSA’s 48 page journal ‘Lights Out’: “It’s distributed three times a year and is the best boarding school journal in in the world! We highlight the things that are going on in boarding houses, but we also give people pro- fessional development tools that can help with their job.” True to its event driven roots, ABSA holds a range of conferences for boarding focused em- ployees throughout the year. An example is one that usually starts at the beginning of March