Knox Grammar’s chatroom scandal handled in ‘worst way’, expert claims

A private boys school has been slammed for its handling of the chatroom scandal by PR experts - while other schools with students allegedly in the chat have denied any knowledge of it.

Knox Grammar’s handling of explosive revelations some of its students engaged in sexist, racist, homophobic chatroom is a textbook lesson in how not to handle a scandal, crisis management experts have said.

It comes after Knox principal Scott James pointed the finger at other unnamed schools which allegedly had students involved in the chatroom on the Discord app — a suggestion other nearby north shore private schools contacted by The Daily Telegraph were quick to deny.

Veteran PR guru Peter Wilkinson, who has handled PR nightmares like Opal Towers fiasco and Newmarch House Covid disaster, said the school’s apparent cone of silence and refusal to answer any questions was the worst way to manage its prestigious brand.

“Private schools or the like have this mad temptation to never talk about anything bad, so they suppress anything at all negative because they‘re terrified of losing their brand,” he said.

He said the school should detail precisely what it was doing and engage a third party to work out a way to help the school address the chatroom while also looking at changing the toxic culture among some of its students.

Knox Grammar school at Wahroonga.

“They need to do what everybody else is doing, and that is to have an external investigator, who has experience at this and have a look and make some recommendations.

“And the third thing they need to address internally, they need to really knock some heads inside the administration … so the parents can see that this is not okay.”

The school said it has been transparent with the community.

In a statement on Wednesday afternoon, Knox said it had hired law firm MinterEllison to review how the school’s discipline policy was applied.

“The school has been fully transparent with both our community, to whom we owe our first obligation, and also to the media. We know that this is appreciated because we are receiving hundreds of messages of support from our parents and staff,” the statement said.

Despite claiming to be transparent, the school refused to answer questions on the topic when approached by The Daily Telegraph about the scandal last week, did not answer questions on Monday and did not answer questions about it on Tuesday.

Trent Southworth. Picture: Alex Wisser

A former Knox parent said the latest letter to parents by the Principal Scott James was full of contradictions.

“By saying they have uncovered others in the group from other schools is purely trying to downplay what they said in the beginning was an incident with a few kids involved, which is now a full blown investigation which sees more than 20 students needing to be disciplined,‘’ he said.

“Besides the obvious contradictions between the newsletter last week and this week, Knox is now trying to deflect their inadequate and secret handling of the affair.”

A spokeswoman for nearby girls school Ravenswood said the school was not aware of any students being involved.

A spokeswoman for Barker College said: “We are also not aware that any Barker students are involved in this Discord chatroom incident.”

Trent Southworth, who educates schools and sporting organisations like the NRL, about how to handle a crisis said once an issue came to light, schools like Knox front up and be transparent about what had gone on rather than trying to duck for cover.

“Once they have been caught out, transparency would be a better way to deal with it, rather than have it drag on and the story goes for two weeks rather than 24 hours,” he said

“Once they get caught out and they go into crisis mode, it is how you deal with that from thereon.

“Because of delaying that process, you just have journos chasing you, and you have people finding snippets of information, and the story grows over weeks and days.”