Our father John went to the school in the 50s and was doing rather well with a fast-growing computer business, so we were sent to Ipswich Prep School. Our father also bought a farm which was great for us as boys and for the family. 

Unfortunately Dad was killed in an accident. We lost the farm, and life immediately became financially tough. We moved from the farm to a practical semi-detached house in central Ipswich.

The initial challenge was that our mother was a full-time teacher and not an expert in how to deal with the family’s financial future including how we could stay on at school. The school and its connections first helped with the advice of Geoffrey Barnard, the Chairman of Governors and a lawyer. He helped tremendously, although the school couldn’t financially assist us, he advised our mother on where to invest our fathers life insurance and so covering our school fees – which was all consumed by the end of 6^th form (there’s a lesson here for us all to get life insured!). Matt also got an academic scholarship (hate him!) that helped.

We can’t underestimate how important the continuity being able to stay on at the school gave us both during the turmoil and change of the first months and years after we lost our Dad.

The behavioural/emotional support the school continued to give us contributed positively in many many ways. We can’t mention them all of course but Barry Hoskins was key, an amazing housemaster and teacher of non-formal education/pastoral care.

Also fantastic events like the annual ski trip run by Derek Chapman (Derek passed away on 12 January this year and will be sorely missed, our thought and best wishes to Gary and the Chapman family). Our mother also helped run the girls High School ski trips, these events were unpaid for teachers and quite a challenge with thirty plus children going mad on a mountain all day and a lot of the night. The holiday companies need teachers so gave teachers children subsidised rates, mum kindly did these so we could also go.

Finally, the school gave us the support and confidence to gain academic and non-academic qualifications that led both of us to Durham University and then a string of post-graduate qualifications in Chartered Accountancy and Business School etc. As a result, one of us has a banking career in the city and the other his own management consultancy firm operating around the world, both amazing opportunities.

So, we’ve ended up with lovely wives and successful children all through, at, or about to go through university, with fantastic values. We’ve also managed to help a lot of people on our journey in all sorts of ways, thanks to what the school instilled in us.

About ten years ago, to recognise what had been done for us, we approached the school to help others in the same situation. We know what the school does to help people achieve their potential and wanted to specifically help pupils at school who lose a parent at a critical time in their education. We found a couple of years later a specific fund for this was also running alongside it and so it made sense to move into that, the Phoenix Fund.

We don’t know who we’ve helped and don’t want to, but the school updates us that it’s been allocated, used and continues to be needed. Wonderful.

I hope we can grow the support for the fund to help more children through times of crisis.

Thank you

Matt Scott (OI 1976-85) and Colin Scott (OI 1975-86)

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