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Craig Campbell, PhD, DipEd, University of Sydney. Posted .
For most of Australia’s European settlement history opportunities for parents and others to choose schools for the children in their families and care were absent or highly constrained. The major effort over the long term was to provide schools for increasing proportions of the population, and by the end of the nineteenth century, to compel families with limited interest in schooling children, to force their attendance.… Continue Reading »
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Jenny Collins, PhD, Independent scholar. Posted .
Catholic schools, faith and a basic education
The purpose of Catholic schooling in nineteenth century New Zealand was to provide an education for the whole of life and to enable the correct development of a child’s whole character of mind and heart. The Church stressed the importance of the educative roles of parents, but they believed that Catholic parents lacked the education and expertise necessary to fulfill these responsibilities.… Continue Reading »
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Craig Campbell, PhD DipEd, University of Sydney. Posted .
The impulse to systematise schooling in the colony of New South Wales occurred early. In the relative absence of wealthy churches, philanthropists and well-established communities, the colonial government needed to play a role in educating young people. The idea that criminality (the convict ‘stain’) could be prevented from passing down the generations through interventions such as chaplain-supervised and a little later church-subsidised schooling was accepted by most of the early governors.… Continue Reading »
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Barry Archibald, M.Ed., Charles Sturt University. Posted .
National schools were founded from 1848 in greater New South Wales. They were governed by a board established and funded by the colonial government. The curriculum of the National schools was utilitarian, based on ‘common Christianity’ principles [see Glossary]. They were expected to expand the access of families to schooling, especially in areas where private or denominational (church) schools were either absent or unsatisfactory.… Continue Reading »
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Craig Campbell, PhD DipEd, University of Sydney. Posted .
In each of the Australian colonies, usually in the 1870s, there were education acts passed that established public school systems. Their defining characteristics have usually been described as ‘free, compulsory and secular’. The Act that came closest to establishing all three of these conditions at the same time was the Victorian Education Act of 1872.… Continue Reading »