The boarding dilemma

Kununurra residents Sophie and Rusty Cooke weren’t sure where to send their boys to school, until they found Scotch College in Perth.

Story Ken Eastwood   Photo Scotch College

In a dilemma that’s experienced by many rural and remote families, it took a long while for Kimberley residents Sophie and Russell ‘Rusty’ Cooke to decide on the right school for their 3 boys. “We were very picky,” Sophie says.

The family lives about 10km out of Kununurra on a mango and turf farm. They also operate a supplement stock feed business and have cattle on agistment. But their 3 boys, Will (14), Tom (12) and Ben (10), have very different learning styles, needs and interests.

Sophie and Rusty had both been to boarding school themselves, but weren’t sure boarding was right for their own boys. In addition, Sophie’s background is in teaching special education, so she had a long list of expectations for the ideal school, while Rusty was emphasising the great lifestyle that comes from living in a rural area. “There are a lot of different ways you can educate, and coming from a relatively privileged educational background, I wanted to give them the best educational opportunities that I could.”

Despite the boys’ different needs, Sophie and Rusty ideally wanted them all to go to the same school, so they didn’t have to deal with multiple institutions. “We finally settled on boarding in Perth, but it wasn’t an easy thing to get there – Perth is a long way away. It’s a 3-hour flight and in the wet season it’s a bit unreliable,” she says.

So, they decided to visit some Perth schools, with a focus on co-educational schools, because so much of the boys’ lifestyle was dominated by males. Yet, in the end they were won over by Scotch College. The school has some 1,600 boy students from kindergarten to year 12, and 140 boarders, mostly from regional WA. “We came in with a long list of criteria and everything at Scotch was just a tick,” Sophie says. “Whether it was emotional needs, sporting needs, creative needs or academic needs, it was tick, tick, tick, and it fitted our family values.”

Sophie says that academic needs were particularly important, but she loved Scotch’s philosophy that it was more important to get the best version of each boy, rather than merely brag about the top performers. This includes a lot of tailored learning for individual students. “The well-rounded boy was really important to us,” she says. “The boarding side of it too – that pastoral care. Boarding was pretty brutal in our day, but we wanted an environment where they would be nurtured and where they would be challenged.”

Will, now in year 9, started at Scotch 2 years ago, and when Tom started this year, Ben was very jealous. “On the day we dropped Tom off in January, Ben said ‘Can I just stay?’ He could not be more keen to get there,” Sophie says. “Of course, he sees the boys playing ping pong and getting beautiful eclairs for their afternoon tea and the sport being played on the ovals, not the hard stuff.”

Will is aiming to have a ringer’s lifestyle up north, with a ute and a kelpie, but Tom is quite different. “This week Tom wants to be a paediatrician, but some weeks he wants to be a Crusty Demon,” Sophie says. “There will be life beyond the north for him. But both of them very quickly became very patriotic to the school – they are both very proud to be Scotch boys.”

Now a couple of other students catch the plane from Kununurra each term to board at Scotch. “If anyone asks for a recommendation for schools, we’re pretty one-eyed,” Sophie says.