Chorus of support for sacked MLC principal

FINANCIAL backers of the Methodist Ladies College, Melbourne have come out in strong support of sacked principal Rosa Storelli.

PROMINENT financial backers of the Methodist Ladies' College in Melbourne have come out in strong support of sacked principal Rosa Storelli, turning the heat on the board of corporate heavyweights who sacked her.

Among those who lined up behind her yesterday were major benefactors Marjorie and Hilton Nicholas, an heir to the Aspro fortune. The Nicholas family has been among MLC's most generous benefactors over several generations.

Ms Nicholas, a patron of the MLC Foundation, said Ms Storelli was "a person of unimpeachable integrity" and an "outstanding educator" with a "clear understanding of the cultures and values of MLC".

She told The Australian she was "mystified" by the decision of the board, chaired by publisher Louise Adler, to sack her.

Ms Storelli, who said yesterday she "absolutely" wanted to be reinstated and had spoken to two QCs, was also backed by leading private school principals including Tim Hawkes, head of Sydney's The King's School.

Dr Hawkes described Ms Storelli as "one of the most gifted educators I know".

"Intelligent, articulate and thoroughly professional, there are not many people of the quality of Ms Storelli," he told The Australian.

"It is therefore with great alarm that I heard of her very public dismissal as head of one of the finest girls' schools in the land."

John Marsden, writer and principal of Candlebark School, north of Melbourne, said Ms Storelli's sacking was "unbelievable" and described her as "one of the best principals in Australia -- innovative, principled, humane and spirited".

A former deputy chairman of the MLC board and former chairman of the MLC Foundation, Geoff Drucker, said Ms Storelli's sacking was destroying "the MLC brand".

"Rosa is probably the best principal in Australia and someone who always operated by the book," he told The Australian.

He said the issue of her overpayment, which Ms Storelli raised with the board, had been shockingly mishandled, had escalated "into this ridiculous bunfight" and was bound to be costly to resolve. Mr Drucker said the MLC board had sacked "the most wonderful principal that a school could ever want", benefactors were furious, the school community was outraged, and pressure was building on the board.

The Victorian chairwoman of the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia, Carolyn Grantskalms, described Ms Storello as an "iconic principal" and "a woman of great integrity" and said many principals were "appalled" by her sacking. "We are mystified and shocked," Mrs Grantskalms said. "She is an outstanding educator. She is an iconic female principal of a leading Australian girls' school."

Ms Adler, head of Melbourne University Publishing, has given several reasons for Ms Storelli's sacking this week, including "significant overpayments of remuneration", believed to be in the order of $700,000.

In a second letter to parents, she said the board had unanimously lost confidence in her "primarily because in the board's view Ms Storelli misled the board during the negotiation of her most recent employment contract, by failing to disclose that she was continuing to receive financial benefits over and above those provided for in her employment agreement".

Ms Storelli, who has engaged lawyers Holding Redlich, said she had been inundated with support.