Truant schools in New South Wales: The Guildford Truant School

The Guildford Truant School opened at the beginning of 1918. Located west of Sydney in Guildford, the school was located on the lands of the Dharug people, in what is now a suburb in the Western Sydney region. The school was in the property Linnwood (also known as Lynwood Hall), selected for its size and proximity to the railway. Thirty-one boys between the ages of eight and fourteen were ‘enrolled’ at the school in 1918, the first year of operation. Only five of those boys were deemed to have ‘comfortable’ economic status, sixteen were ‘poor,’ and ten were ‘very poor’. These assessments were made by the Superintendent, Charles Dawson, a teacher appointed by the Education Department. Unlike other institutions to which children found to be truant could be committed to—such as reformatories, orphanages, industrial schools and training farms—the Guildford Truant School seems to be the only such institution in Australia that was administered by a state education department.

The compulsory clause element of the 1870s acts has remained the most persistent and became stronger over time. Other attempts to curb truancy included fines for parents and guardians, instituted from the earliest days of compulsory schooling in most states. Examining how truants have been categorised, institutionalised and positioned in relation to compulsory schooling and other institutions is one way that historians might interrogate how the clause has ongoing implications for contemporary education policy.

Committal to Guildford Truant School

The Guildford Truant School was only for truants, and only for boys. They were generally first identified as habitual truants by an Education Department truant officer and committed to Guildford through the Children’s Courts. These had been established in New South Wales in 1905 and were held in several locations. The Minister for Education had the authority to decide on the length of ‘detention of truants,’ and most boys spent at least three months at the school. All staff who worked at Guildford were employed by the Education Department, and the school was an attempt by the Department to understand and manage the issue of truancy as an educational problem.

The committal papers created in the Children’s Courts and sent to the Guildford Truant School show that evidence brought against boys charged with truancy varied. Some court records noted that the boys were ‘addicted’ to truanting, that they did not attend school so that they could go to the cinema, roam the streets, smoke cigarettes or spend time in the bush. Other boys told the Court that they played truant because they wanted to work, they did not like their teachers, or that they were targeted by other students. Sometimes, parents gave evidence in the Children’s Courts, explaining their attempts to ensure their sons attended school. Parents could and did request that their sons be committed to Guildford Truant School. These requests increased during the Great Depression as families experienced economic and other stresses.

Operation of Guildford Truant School

The committal and discharge records of boys sent to Guildford are available as part of the Education Department records at the NSW State Records and Archives. Yet materials showing what the boys did while committed are harder to come by.  A map providing details for drainage work shows that the classrooms were portable: one a ‘Double Portable Classroom’ and the other a ‘Single Portable Classroom’. The latter had a new partly enclosed porch. An inventory of the school upon its closure in 1935 lists the material therein:

SCHOOL ROOM

• 4 blackboards
• 3 easels
• 2 chairs
• 4 forms
• 1 Australian Flag
• 1 table, 3’ x 2’
• 2 framed pictures
• 1 broom
• 43 dual desks

‘Crop of Pumpkin and Squash’, Museums of History New South Wales- State Archives Collection: NRS-15051-1-16-[855]-4

Other material suggests the focus was on outdoor work, including farming. Photographs of the school show boys picking beans, posing in front of a pumpkin harvest, and tying up tomato vines, with paddocks in the background showing the rural setting of the school.

‘Tomato Patch,’ Museums of History New South Wales- State Archives Collection: NRS-15051-1-16-[855]-4

Reports in newspapers provide another perspective. In 1923, the President of the New South Wales Teachers Federation visited the school. His report, published in Education: Journal of the NSW Public School Teachers Federation (15 August 1923, 4) was mostly favourable:

For some reason or other, not very clear, the name “Truant School” conjures up a vision of a stern military despotism calculated to instil such a fear into the heart of a truant that he will not be likely to wander a second time from the straight path. But such a concept is far from the truth. The discipline is there, certainly: but it is obtained by working on the better side of the boys’ natures. It is a quiet, wholesome discipline; strong, but not obtrusive.

A lad who is admitted does not carry with him his past record. He may have been an incorrigible truant, but immediately on entering the school he is no longer in that particular class of wrong-doers, for he becomes part of a community which attends school regularly, and no more may the terms of reproach be applied to him.

At the same time, he suggested the decreasing number of admissions to Guildford that year was due to Attendance Officers being overworked and therefore unable to monitor attendance. In the three years prior, the average number of new admissions to Guildford was 36, by 1923, this number fell to just 12.

Evening News 11 July 1930

Some boys absconded. In 1921, two boys ran away and one of them, a thirteen-year-old boy named Frank, was killed when he was hit by a train at night near Sutherland. Although his death was ruled as accidental, the coroner’s comments included a pointed remark about the failure of Guildford, arguing that when the state takes on the duty to ensure truants attend school, they also take on the responsibility of parents and should ‘see that something is done to prevent the possibility of escape’ (Sun, 11 August 1921, 7). In 1930, two ten-year old boys ran away from Guildford following ‘incessant bullying from bigger boys.’ They walked to Mosman, where they begged for food, before heading onto Middle Head, where they camped out for three nights. They were apprehended in Manly and returned to Guildford (Evening News, 11 July 1930, 5).

Parents were permitted to visit their sons on the first Tuesday of each month between 2 and 4pm.  A list of ‘Rules for Visits of Parents’ listed items that parents were prohibited from bringing with them to give to their sons, including ‘fruit, lollies, food, money, etc.’ There was also a ban on ‘reading matter.’

‘Rules for Visits of Parents’ in Annual Report, 1927, p. 193, MHNSW-StAC: NRS 3829, [5/16174].

The ‘follow- up system’ of letter writing was just one way that boys continued to be monitored after their release. All boys discharged from Guildford were placed on parole. Instructions regarding their release were sent to their parents, their school, and truant officer assigned to their case. This officer visited each boys’ home prior to their release, to inspect it and submit a report, including suggestions if the parents were ‘deemed unfitted to resume control’ of the child.

The role of the Education Department Attendance Officer was to keep the child under supervision, and to submit reports about school attendance and behaviour for a period of no more than twelve months, after which

the boy should be allowed to feel that he has regained his place as a normal child, free from official supervision. If he offended at any future time, he can be immediately returned to the Institution without Court procedure. The discharge on licence provides for this.

Some boys were admitted more than once to Guildford after their truancy continued following their release. In some instances, at least, the dire poverty in which they lived seemed to be as much a reason for their committal as their attendance record. The impact of the Great Depression on families and children’s lives is reflected in these records, with parents—often mothers—explaining that they had to work and could not monitor their children’s movements during the day.

Closure

The Guildford Truant School was closed at the end of 1935. This followed the commissioned inquiry into the Child Welfare Department, by J.E. McCulloch, in 1934. This report resulted in sweeping changes to child welfare legislation and saw large numbers of boys discharged from institutions in which they were being held. The number of admissions to Guilford had been decreasing in the years prior. McCulloch’s inquiry heard from the Superintendent, Charles Dawson, ‘that school attendances throughout the State were remarkably good,’ and that this was due in part to improved methods of teaching and more appropriate surrounds (National Advocate, 26 May 1934, 6). The number of boys committed to Guildford was very low in 1935: just 38 boys (including 15 readmissions) against 52 discharges, leaving only 11 boys at the end of the year. They were all transferred to other institutions at the beginning 1936.

At the time of Guildford’s closure, there was some discussion that a new school could be established to accommodate truants, uncontrollable, and incorrigible boys. Superintendent Dawson had visited the United Kingdom and United States to make ‘a study of the mal-adjusted children’ and submitted a report to the Director of Education advocating the establishment of a new institution like the Prevention School in Chicago. There was support from within the Child Welfare Department for a non-residential ‘maladjustment’ school, however, this did not eventuate and boys deemed truant were instead accommodated in existing Child Welfare institutions, sometimes with separate facilities. The category of truant was structurally subsumed into the category of neglected or ‘at risk’, or juvenile offender, or risky child. Truancy was less viewed as an educational problem at this time and was instead approached from a medical or scientific angle, underpinned by new ideas about child welfare more generally.

It took some time for the legislative changes first announced in 1934 to be realised via the Child Welfare Act 1939. The McCulloch inquiry, combined with proposed amendments to the Public Instruction (Amendment) Act, 1916 to change the ways boys were sentenced, combined with changing ideas about how best to categorise and deal with children contributed to the closure. Powers were granted to the Special Magistrate in the Children’s Court to place truants on probation under the same conditions as a child found to be neglected or a juvenile offender, under the Child Welfare Act 1923.

In 1936, the Guildford Truant School site was transferred to the Child Welfare Department, and it was repurposed as the Guildford Domestic Science Training School, for girls and young women who had been made wards of the state.  The New South Wales state government pursued the idea of institutionalising truants via institutions controlled by the Child Welfare Department. These were part of existing institutions: Turner Cottage Special School for Truants, in 1938, located on the grounds of the Mittagong Farm Home for Boys, and the Yarra Bay House Truancy School, in 1939. This latter school was in buildings previously the site of the La Perouse Training School.  Although it was named a Truancy School, this institution received children in state care for reasons other than truancy from the outset. This included First Nations children, and children voluntarily committed by their parents. The Angelwood Special School, also designed for truants, was opened by the Child Welfare Department in 1943, for boys convicted of truancy. It represented another attempt to deal with truants separately from children who were otherwise committed to institutions. In 1975, Anglewood began to admit girls. It closed in 1979.

Conclusion

Each state had their own ways of enforcing the compulsory clauses and of identifying, classifying and responding to truants. Most other states committed truants to institutions more closely linked to the administration of juvenile justice and reformatory laws, and child welfare laws. There were some attempts made to establish separate institutions for truants specifically. In South Australia, as Phil Cashen (1985) shows, the State Children’s Council claims that a truant school was needed in the late 1800s were found to be unnecessary.  In Victoria, four institutions designed to accommodate children who had been made wards of the state or voluntarily committed by their families were designated as institutions for truants. These were the Gordon Boys Institute, the Tally Ho Boys Training Farm, the Bayswater Boys Home, and St Augustine’s Home in Geelong. From 1911, an Education Department school, staffed with Department teachers, operated at each institution and was attended by boys convicted of truancy, as well as those committed under child welfare and reformatory laws. This attempt to limit the committal of truants to only some institutions changed over time as children found to be truants were sent to numerous other institutions in the state in the decades that followed.

Although the compulsory clause is fundamental to schooling in Australia, the resultant category of truant has remained on the margins of the historiography and—like the compulsory clause—largely unproblematised. Scholarship from the Adelaide school of social history is an exception in histories of education, and truants and truancy has otherwise been considered in historical scholarship focused on child welfare systems, institutions, and juvenile justice systems.