”Sophie’s grandmother is very unwell in Paris and we must urgently finish her school term a week before the end of the year.”

”Alessandro needs to finish school tomorrow to attend this Friday his cousin’s wedding in Rome.”

Not unfamiliar reasons written in the email and text messages that hit principals’ desks at this time of the school year, but they are oddly infrequent at times other than those approaching school holidays.

Just coincidentally, international airfares usually rise by about 20 per cent as we move into this busy Christmas period.

For private schools, it’s the ski season and the week before holiday periods that excite in-term requests from some students’ parents for special leave. These requests of principals are irritating, and with some parents, they can result in angry interchanges in the principal’s office – especially when the parents finalise flight bookings in over-confident expectation of the principal’s approval.

Most private schools, in particular those with boarding communities, make it very clear leave under these circumstances will not be permitted. Penalties are often required.

In every school there are repeat offenders – those few students’ parents of the born-to-rule mentality, who seem to think school regulations, signed and agreed to at the point of enrolment, do not really apply to them. There are some parents, a small minority, who assume a principal’s approval and make no attempt to comply with the requirements of the school.

Of course, the case reported in Saturday’s Herald of the two Sydney Grammar primary school brothers, the chess playing champions, is different to this. Or is it?

As with Sydney Grammar School, most large, busy schools have among their students many early high achievers in music, sport, traditional dance, speech, art making and so on. It would be logical to assume that selective government and private schools – Grammar being one of these – would have a disproportionate number of these highly successful young people, especially when one adds sporting, music or academic scholars to the student pool.

However, all good schools nurture these students and provide encouragement and support in the development of excellence and commitment in as many activities as can be managed.

Rarely would a school principal not try her best to accommodate the emerging talents of her students. Guided by the policy framework of the school, programs are developed, members of staff are allocated, time is given within the busyness of the school’s in-school and after-school curriculum. Written school policy, now always publicly accessible, usually guides the extent to which a school can flexibly respond to the exceptional requests of parents.

Sometimes it is not possible or it is unwise to bend to the individual requests of parents. At times, these requests arrive on the principal’s desk without reasonable lead time. Sometimes they are demands, at other times notifications: ”My daughter is absent today attending a local pickup-sticks trial in Carlton.” Sometimes the reasons given are revealed as fabrications.

Occasionally, the request follows a pattern of behaviour where, despite the best efforts of the school staff, performance and attendance at school is clearly secondary to the outside interests of the child.

At other times, the young person could be an integral member of a sporting team or a music or drama ensemble, where they cannot easily be replaced and their absence disadvantages the performance of the whole.

Schools are caring places where the essential mission is the intellectual and social development of each young person entrusted to them by the parents. And our schools have policies that exist for legal, administrative and general welfare reasons, which in private schools are agreed to in writing by parents at the point of enrolment.

The principal’s office is where the core tensions between mission and policy are eventually resolved, rarely to the happy satisfaction of everyone.

Dr William McKeith is the former principal of PLC Sydney and now advises schools in Australia and Asia.

Scource: http://www.smh.com.au

SEVERAL Sydney private schools have offered places to the young brothers told by Sydney Grammar to find another school because they took unauthorised leave to compete in the World Youth Chess Championship in Brazil last month.

The boys’ father, Ignatius Willathgamuwa, has spoken with the preparatory schools at Knox Grammar and The King’s School about enrolling Kevin, 8, and Rowan, 9, next year.

”The headmasters of both schools are welcoming the two boys and are saying that, when it comes to the world championships, it will be a matter of submitting a leave application and that it won’t be a problem,” Dr Willathgamuwa said.

The boys were absent from school for 10 days, having reached the world championships for a second successive year. The registrar of St Andrew’s Cathedral School, Bruce Perry, said he would be happy to discuss the possibility of enrolling the two boys.

”My school … has a proud history of supporting students with their outside school commitments, particularly those at an elite level,” he wrote.

The director of studies at Wollemi College in Sydney’s west, Brett Wright, promised the boys ”the complete support of our entire college community”, should they have the chance to compete again.

The chairman of the Association of Heads of Independent Schools in NSW, John Collier, said the balance was difficult to strike. ”It is always really tricky for a school to balance school-based activities with external activities and the more substantial the external activity the harder it is,” he said. Sydney Grammar refused to comment on its leave policies yesterday.

Other Sydney Grammar students have encountered resistance to their pursuit of extracurricular activities.

James Rowlinson left the school at the end of year 10. In 2007, the headmaster, John Vallance, authorised five days’ leave to compete in the world kayaking championships on the ”understanding that leave for a similar purpose is not sought again”.

Mr Rowlinson said he needed nine days’ absence to travel and compete and, when he returned to school, he was immediately taken aside by the head of discipline ”for a sharp and noisy word”.

Mr Rowlinson, whose ambition was to compete in the 2009 championships, switched to Knox Grammar. The competition clashed with his Higher School Certificate trials, he said, but the school allowed him to sit his exams a week early.

”It was just a polar opposite,” he said. ”At [Sydney] Grammar, their idea of education is that the HSC is the be-all and end-all.”

Source: http://www.smh.com.au

TWO of Australia’s best young chess players have been told by Sydney Grammar to find another school next year after taking unauthorised leave to compete in the World Youth Chess Championships in Brazil.

Kevin Willathgamuwa, 8, and his brother Rowan, 9, have also been excluded from Grammar’s chess team competing in the Australian Schools Teams Championships at Knox Grammar this weekend, despite missing only one day of the long competition. The boys were away from school for 10 days. In Brazil, Kevin placed 10th out of 90 boys in the under 8s, and Rowan won half his matches. The Australian grand master, Ian Rogers, who was at the competition, said Kevin was clearly the best player of his age in Australia.

”It’s incredible someone should be punished for missing two weeks of year 2 for representing Australia,” Mr Rogers said. ”It was very important for him to go to the world youth championships. It’s not just the tournament but it’s important for him to see what other kids have achieved at the same age.”

The school had strongly communicated its position to the boys’ father, Ignatius Willathgamuwa, before the family left for Brazil.