Entries Tagged: Government secondary

An archive of entries with keywords: "Government secondary"

Australian education observed by Aleksandr Leonidovich Yashchenko

Australia, 1903

Note: Photographs of Indigenous persons who have passed away appear in this entry.

In 1903, the Russian scientist, Aleksandr Leonidovich Yashchenko visited Australia, three years after federation. Yashchenko was an accomplished scholar whose education and graduate training included zoology, anthropology and geography. He taught at prestigious colleges in St Petersburg. His visit to Australia was a research commission on behalf of the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences. … Continue Reading »

Challenging the system? (2007)

Western Australia, 1980-2005

Subtitled “a dramatic tale of neoliberal reform in an Australian high school”, Martin Forsey’s analysis of Como Senior High School in Western Australia provides a case study of radical public education reform in the 1990s. It stands as a parallel study to that of Mount Druitt High School in New South Wales.

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The Wyndham Scheme

New South Wales, 1957-1965

The problem of how best to deliver universal secondary education to youth exercised many national systems of education through the twentieth century. Among the democracies, the United States and Scandinavian countries were pioneers of a particular approach: comprehensive secondary schooling. Pressures towards the comprehensive school increased after World War II.… Continue Reading »

Selective public high schools

New South Wales, 1960-2020

Selective high schools in New South Wales are those public secondary schools that enrol students who have achieved highly in annually-held, competitive and state-wide entrance tests. There are academically selective schools in the nongovernment sector also, but it is those in the public sector that are commonly known as ‘selective schools’.… Continue Reading »

Adelaide High School: Inventing a state high school

South Australia, 1875-1920

The Education Act of 1875 in South Australia provided for the foundation of a system of public, mainly elementary schools. It also allowed “infant schools, evening schools, schools for the teaching of any branch of science or art, and advanced schools for continuing the education of scholars who shall have obtained prizes at public schools, or otherwise proved themselves qualified for admission: Provided that the course of training in all such schools shall be secular” (clause 12).… Continue Reading »

Residualised public schooling: The case of Mount Druitt High School

Sydney, New South Wales, 1995-2010

From the 1970s in Australia there were rapid changes in the nature and patterns of employment. They especially affected sectors of the population that had been reliant on work in the manufacturing industry. As a result of these and other changes in each of the larger cities of Australia, suburban regions emerged that were marked by high levels of unemployment and increasing poverty.… Continue Reading »

Comprehensive government high school

Australia, 1950-2010

The idea that a secondary school could include all youth in a community or neighbourhood, regardless of their social circumstances, belongs to the twentieth century. By the 1970s such comprehensive schools educated a majority of Australian 12-17 year-old youth, but the size of the majority has been in a steady, though slow decline, from the 1980s.… Continue Reading »

Public high schools: the foundations

Australia, 1870-1920

This form of post-elementary schooling was introduced from the nineteenth century in the Australian colonies and then states. Cities and towns in the United States and Scotland began introducing public high schools from earlier in the nineteenth century, but the Australian colonies held to the English tradition that church and private grammar schools and academies (see glossary) would be the main providers of post-elementary education through most of the nineteenth century.

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