PMSA schools scandal: Parents and ex-students protest outside Somerville House

STUDENTS who attended this morning’s rally outside Somerville House have been given detention.

• Last thing students need
• Principal ordered off campus
• ‘Bullying and un-Christian’

STUDENTS who attended this morning’s rally outside elite Brisbane school Somerville House have been given detention.

Teachers at Somerville House were seen filming the peaceful protest outside the school and now distressed students have called their parents to tell how they’ve now been slapped with detention orders.

“This shows absolute contempt,” said one mum.

“What does this teach our children about the democratic process and speaking up for what you believe in?”

“To punish the children is a disgrace.”

The students in Year 8 and 10 have never received detention before and are exemplary achievers within their year group.

A father-of-two said: “Are the PMSA trying the be the Thought Police from 1984”.

Protesters held signs and dressed in Somerville House colours during the rally. Picture: Claudia Baxter/AAP

Dozens of parents and alumni gathered outside the South Brisbane school from 7am, calling for the powerful church body that oversees the independent school to be disbanded.

Parents of current and former students, alumni, and Somerville House students gathered in a bid to hold the Presbyterian and Methodist Schools Association board to account for a deepening scandal that has seen principal Flo Kearney and communications manager Sarah Dreaver leave the school.

Past parent and active member of Beyond PMSA Wendy Cox said the rally was about bringing awareness to the wider school community and holding those in power to account.

The group is calling for the PMSA to be disbanded, for more transparency around issues surrounding the school, better communication to stakeholders, a preservation of the school’s prestige and heritage, while advocating for Education Minister Kate Jones to step in and hold an inquiry.

Somerville Parents are calling for and independent inquiry into the PMSA board https://t.co/7mt4AOcl0n pic.twitter.com/qF77uo7fRh

— The Courier-Mail (@couriermail) October 26, 2017

“This school has been here for 119 years and people just think there’s a bit of scandal but it’s way more than that, it’s talking about a governing body, which refer to as the PMSA who are making decisions and not involving the stakeholders,” Ms Cox said.

“We chose to send our girls here for not only the Christian values that the school and the churches espouse but what they were given as opportunities while they were here as students and we feel like that’s all been slowly destroyed.

“(They) have yet to come in and answer any of our questions or allay any of our fears not only parents of this campus but parents of other three campuses that are under their umbrella.”

Isabel Bauer was here for the last protest – in 1987. @couriermail pic.twitter.com/T6it3e15Hu

— Madura McCormack (@MaduraMcCormack) October 26, 2017

Many parents at the rally chose not to speak to The Courier-Mail, citing fears that their children could be expelled from the school if they aired their views.

It is understood students in the school, especially those in Year 9 and up, have been impacted by the instability and murmurs caused by the fiasco.

Parents told The Courier-Mail they see the PMSA as a “faceless” entity who are a law onto themselves and have become a “stain” on the name of the four schools that they govern.

Beyond PMSA is holding a town hall meeting in Coorparoo on Wednesday.

Parents stage a protest outside Somerville House at South Brisbane.

The Courier-Mail has exclusively revealed the PMSA is embroiled in scandal including an alleged data theft, series of lewd texts and a string of high-profile sackings and resignations.

The PMSA governs Somerville House, Brisbane Boys College, Clayfield College and Sunshine Coast Grammar School.

Dubbed “Game of Thrones in cardigans”, it has also emerged some parents of about 4500 students at four private schools are fearful the PMSA has the authority to cancel children’s school registrations without reason.

In a legal letter from Hopgood Ganim Lawyers acting for the PMSA, the Somerville House P & F Executive is warned of “appropriate” action if they discuss a leaked Deloitte report, obtained by The Courier-Mail.

The Deloitte report, commissioned by the PMSA, details a proposal to merge the four prestigious schools, under the secret “As One” strategy opposed by critics who believe it will destroy the traditions and identities of the historic schools.

PMSA executive manager Rick Hiley — who has resisted calls to stand down from his $350,000-a-year job over his role in the “unauthorised downloading’’ of thousands of files, lewd texts and trips to a nude spa in a Korean bathhouse in school hours — would take over operational control under the plan.

The legal letter to the P & F warns the Deloitte report is “strictly confidential” and threatens a legal breach against “any person who engages in behaviour contrary to their obligations to the PMSA”.

“Release by the association of any of the Deloitte reports or any information contained in or derived from them, at a meeting of the Association or otherwise, would perpetuate what appear to be breaches by persons presently unknown of obligations of confidence they have to the PMSA, including under the Code of Conduct,’’ it said.

“Any release or discussion of the Deloitte Reports, by or with the assistance of any member of the Executive Committee of the Association, will amount to a breach of the Code of Conduct by the people involved in that exercise.”

Somerville House principal Flo Kearney and director of communications Sarah Dreaver were dumped on Wednesday and marched off the school campus, falsely accused of leaking documents.

Organisers expect hundreds of parents, ex-students and school community members from all four private schools will turn out for the street protest on the corner of Vulture and Graham streets, South Brisbane, at 7am tomorrow.

The protest is reminiscent of a similar rally when secret PMSA plans to sell off the prime Somerville House site and relocate the school were uncovered and overturned by “people power” in street protests in 1987.