Celebrations were held in Armidale in June 2011 to mark the 150th anniversary of what is known today as Armidale City Public School. The story of the origins of the school is best told in its proper context, against a background of the development and growth of schools in Armidale and – equally importantly – in early New South Wales, with a consideration of the vital issue of how schools were funded. There were clearly defined stages in the history of schooling in NSW. This week we continue a series exploring those stages.
The arrival of Governor Richard Bourke in NSW in 1833 heralded a new era in the story of schooling in the young colony. He had been appointed to implement the new British Government’s liberal policies. His plan was to create an educational system which achieved the dual aims of replacing the old exclusive system while retaining a system which was suitable to the social and religious nature of the colony. He considered that the bitterness which had developed over education was inevitable, and his solution was to propose that the Government would establish schools which were Christian in character but not tied to any one denomination.
Known as the ‘Irish’, ‘Stanley’ or ‘Derby’ system, the Irish National system had been established in Ireland in 1831 and had in the main proved acceptable to Catholics and Protestants alike. In 1836 Governor Bourke passed the NSW Church Act. Its provisions included: religious instruction in schools, which was limited to daily Bible readings without comment; teachers, who were to receive salaries of £100 to £150 per annum; and fees which were to be charged for equipment, building repairs and maintenance.
In addition, Church schools were to remain open and were to be funded until the National School System was established, after which they were to pay their own way. This was the beginning of a Government push which aimed to close Church schools or make them responsible for their own funding.
The scheme was opposed by the Protestant ascendancy and its allies, who disagreed with Bourke’s view that the State, in dealing with religious bodies, should not prefer one to the other. Protests were led by the William Grant Broughton, who had been consecrated a bishop in February 1836, and was the head of the Church of England in Australia. He had witnessed the changing face of British politics and was aware of the limitations being placed upon the Church there by the State. With Liberalism on the rise, education was now being seen as a necessary duty of the State, not the Church.
Such thinking was anathema to Broughton. His view was that the State’s duty was to support the Established Church. Other protests came from wealthy and influential members of the NSW Legislative Council who contended that it would be dangerous in the extreme to educate the masses. Thus, by 1837 when Governor Bourke was succeeded by Sir George Gipps, the issue of Government funding of schools revealed various conflicting views of the relationship of Church and State, and prejudicial views about who should receive schooling at all.
Like his predecessors, the new Governor initiated a new solution to the funding of schools. Gipps proposed a system of education based on the British and Foreign School System, which would have a Board of Education to administer the system. Broughton again led the opposition and he was supported by the Catholics. The vehemence of the united opposition forced Gipps to waver and he dropped his proposal.
The piecemeal system of education continued until 1844 when the Legislative Council’s Select Committee addressed the education problems, including the fact that out of a total population of 25,676 children (aged four to 14) only 13,000 were attending schools. Clearly, one of the casualties of the ongoing conflicts between Church and State, and among the different Church denominations, about Government funding to schools was that schooling was used by fewer than half the colony’s children. The Select Committee recommended that the Government assume overall responsibility for education.
Governor Charles Augustus Fitzroy’s arrival in 1846 heralded the final stages in the colonial struggles for the control of education. The economic depression of the 1840s had helped reduce old sectarian rivalries and allowed a compromise acceptable to the major religious denominations. A dual system of education with secular schools and denominational schools was established in January 1848, each under a separate board.
A Denominational Board was established to control Church schools. The Denominational School Board structure created, in effect, four separate administrative units, representing each of the four main denominations (Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist). The amount of money appropriated to each denomination was fixed by the Legislative Council according to the proportion of the population belonging to that denomination, as determined by the last census statistics. In all matters other than the distribution of money the Board carried out recommendations made by the heads of the respective denominations.
A National Board of Education was also established, with authority to set up and maintain schools on the model of the Irish National System, with its main objective being: “to afford facilities to persons of every denomination” for the efficient education of their children in the same school, “without prejudice to the conscientious convictions of any”. The National Board of Education would have a difficult row to hoe. It was founded with no administrative system, no schools, no textbooks and no regulations. It set about appointing agents to visit towns and establish local boards to establish schools.
Against this background, it is interesting to see how the dual system worked in practice in a place such as the infant Armidale township, which had been established by Commissioner George Macdonald and his detachment of Police in 1839. The story continues next week.
