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One of Regional Australia's leading private schools, The Armidale School (TAS), has dramtically increased the number of scholarships 
provided by The Armidale School Foundation from 32 in 2005 to 73 in 2006. A further 27 scholarships are provided from other bequests.
Announcing the increase, Geoffrey Allen (Foundation President) stated that the additional scholarships were especially designed to ease the burden of drought that had affected so many parents over the last few years. The increase followed an increase in the Foundations's assets from $A5.5 to $7.2 million over the last year.
In a related development, TAS is to proceed with the building of a Creative and Performing Arts Building in the next stage of a continuous building program that began over forty years ago.
The new building is largely due to the generosity of TAS Old Boy Mike Hoskins (Austin, Texas) who offered to match every donation raised on a dollar for dollar basis without limit. Following closing of the appeal, Mike will contribute $A1.2 million.
Mike's name was kept secret during the initial phase of the appeal. However, he has now been introduced to the TAS community through a video conference from Austin, Texas, a conference demonstrating the value of the new communications technology.
TAS itself has had a superb and long-standing record dating back over fourty years in introducing students to new ICT technology. As a simple example, in 1996 the school played a major role in the Collective Wisdom demonstration in which students from all Armidale schools (public and private, primary and secondary) gathered together to produce web sites from material transmitted from all parts of the city.
The demonstration aimed to demonstrate the educational value of the new technology. TAS played a major part in both coordination and in providing supporting training to students from other schools.