Australian Schools: A Brief History
In the early 1800s churches set up schools to teach children how to read so they could read the bible and learn religion.
By the 1830s, government set up schools. They saw them as a way to reduce crime and help create an organised and orderly society from the Penal Colony. Children were taught the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic (known as the 3 r’s) as well as how to be ‘good moral, law-abiding citizens.’
In the 1870s education became compulsory. The church-run schools were outside the Government system and remained so until well into the 1900s.
The depression of the 1890s and the need for skilled workers, caused merchants to demand that the technical education in schools should be improved.
Apart from increasing the time spent in primary schools to seven years, and decreasing the total amount of the time spent in high school to four years, this system remained basically the same until the 1950s. Since then, changes to the curriculum and examination methods seem to have occurred every few years, depending on the amount of pressure that is placed on politicians.
