First compulsorary education - schools Tasmania
Tasmania was the first commonwealth colony to have compulsorary education
Penal history and schools
Tasmania was the second penal colony established in Australia after New South Wales. The ruling colonial interests of the penal settlement dominated the early history of education. The first children to receive education were ‘the poor, the neglected, the orphaned and the incipiently criminal children’ (Phillips 1985, p.10). Although schools in Tasmania were assisted by the government from 1817, when Thomas Fitzgerald was given a subsidy for education on the condition that he admitted poor children free, the government did not take full responsibility for any school, other than those attached to the convict system, until 1839 (Sprod 1984, p.18). Education was viewed as having a moral benefit to the colony whose ‘adults were sunken too deeply in vice to be reclaimable’ (Phillips 1985, p.11). The King’s Orphan School (later to be known as the Queen’s Orphan School) was established by sectarian interests and opened in 1828. Poor children were admitted free (Barcan 1980, p.62). When the school moved to new premises at St John’s Park, New Town, up to 500 orphans at a time received basic education and residential care. On leaving, boys were apprenticed to a trade and girls entered domestic service (Griffiths 1983, p.1).
In 1833, the Colonial Office established the Point Puer school for juvenile prisoners, described as ‘an experiment in the reformation of child convicts’ (Austin 1972, p.1). The school was run by two good-conduct men from Port Arthur and reportedly had limited educational success:
In all, the majority of the boys made very little progress except for the few bright boys who learnt despite the system. Most progress was made with reading. In 1837 of the 99 illiterate boys who entered the institution 58 were taught to read and in 1868 the numbers were 160–114.
Hooper 1967, pp.19–20
In 1839, Governor Franklin established a Board of Education to fund and supervise the public day-schools of the colony. The system was non-sectarian, partly funded by the State and partly by the parents’ contributions. The system was centrally controlled, with local support encouraged, and intended for all of those who chose to avail themselves of the services, but particularly for the poor (Sprod 1984, p.18).
Thomas Arnold’s report on education in 1850 notes 500 children being maintained and instructed at the Queen’s Orphan School in New Town. The school was the only school in the State to have industrial training in its curriculum (Reeves 1935, p.53). In 1865, the Hobart Town Benevolent Society presented a petition requesting that the government ‘establish industrial schools and reformatories for the vagrant and neglected children who infested the city streets’ (Phillips 1985, p.54). In 1868, the Public Schools Bill was introduced. School attendance became compulsory for children between seven and twelve years who lived within one mile of public schools in certain ‘settled’ districts. The Act provided some exemptions: children who could already read and write and those who were educated privately (Sprod 1984, p.20).
Tasmania was the first colony of the British Empire to have compulsory education. In 1885, a State Department of Education was established under the Education Act. The Act exempted children ‘whose health or some other unavoidable cause prevented attendance at school’ (Reeves 1935, p.78). These exemptions included children with physical and mental disabilities. The Act established a number of statutory functions including:
Regulating the establishment, maintenance, and classification of state schools, kindergartens, training colleges for teachers, practising schools, manual training schools, domestic economy schools, night sachools, continuation schools, technical schools and classes, schools for the blind, the deaf, the dumb and other defectives, truant schools and other such schools as the Minister recommends.
Reeves 1935, p.80
The Blind, Deaf and Dumb Institute, a benevolent institute, was founded in Hobart in 1887. In 1905, an amendment to the Education Act 1885 made compulsory the education of blind, deaf and mute children between the ages of seven and sixteen. The Education Department contributed to the tuition fees and board for education at the institute, and after 1925 took responsibility for the payment of teachers (Griffiths 1983, p.2).