Scotch College students suspended for late-night run to OTR during school camp

Parents at an elite private school have been told their children left camp for a midnight OTR snack run - and no one knew until a student dobbed them in a week later.

More than 20 students from an elite Adelaide private school were suspended following a late-night outing to buy “meat” during a school camp at Victor Harbor, leaving parents outraged.

Parents of Year 11 students at Scotch College received calls last week to notify them their children would be suspended for two days following a midnight jaunt to an OTR service station while on camp at Adare House.

The Advertiser spoke to one of the parents, who wished to remain anonymous, about the incident that left her questioning whether the response to the incident was appropriate.

The mother said her 17-year-old son had been suspended almost two weeks after the camp, which took place from August 30 to September 1.

She said the group left to get “meat” because “the food at the camp was crap”.

“It’s easy to see how they’ve had that lapse of not realising that it’s a camp and not home.”

The mother said she believed the students’ intentions were innocent but conceded they were doing the wrong thing.

Adare campsite at Victor Harbor. Picture: Uniting Venues SA

She said the school “didn’t know about it” until a week after the camp.

“The children went out and came back and nothing happened,” she said.

“A week later one of the children snitched on those children and then it became a big issue.”

On Tuesday last week, the mother received a call from the school informing her she could not send her teenager to school on Wednesday and Thursday.

She was told her son “breached camp rules by going out unsupervised”.

The mother described the punishment as “extreme” and said she was “angry at the school” for making her son miss school.

“Usually two days doesn’t sound a lot but it is a lot at this time of the year when a Year 11 student needs to be on top of things at school,” she said.

“I was not particularly concerned about the behaviour he showed.

“He already knew it was the wrong thing to do.”

In an email to the mother, Scotch College principal Trent Driver defended the decision to suspend the students saying the response was “appropriate” because the action was planned and involved risk.

OTR service station at Victor Harbor. Picture: Google

The principal referenced online materials that could be used for her son to learn.

Scotch College declined to comment further.

The mother said she had to take two days off work to make sure her child caught up on his school work.

“We had to take time from work to be here and force him to do his own work,” she said.

Instead of suspension, the mother said she would have “given him detention where he gives up his lunch breaks to work”.

“I would have given him community work to do, tidy up the school,” she said.

The mother said when her son returned to school on Friday following the suspension, teachers were “scrambling around to get those kids then to catch up”.

Scotch College, Adelaide. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

“Does that sort of extreme measure serve the purpose they wanted it to serve?” she said.

“I don’t question that they did the wrong thing … but I question the type of punishment.”

The incident comes just weeks after The Advertiser revealed almost 20 children aged from just four to six were suspended from SA state schools every week during the most recent snapshot taken by the Education Department.

Overall numbers of suspensions are on the rise, with 4211 in Term 2, 2022 – the highest since the 3934 in the same term in 2019 before the pandemic.

And a growing number of public school students have been repeatedly suspended in recent years.

The Education Department is expected to finalise a review of its Suspension, Exclusion and Expulsion of Students Procedure for government schools by the end of the year.

Originally published as Scotch College students suspended for late-night run to OTR during school camp