Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T11:58:40.894Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Gender and Class in the Transformation of the Public High School in Melbourne, 1946–85

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Richard Teese
Richard Teese*
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Public high schools in Australia rose on the waves of economic expansion during the first and the second halves of the twentieth century. The earliest establishments, including the ill-fated few that were founded in New South Wales under the Public Instruction Act of 1880, shared some of the features of the American high school as established in Massachusetts in 1827. Open to all children who had successfully completed elementary school, they were intended to play a broad role by offering both vocational and academic or university-preparatory courses. But they were not free; they were administered by the state, rather than by a local authority; and there were very large regional differences in provision. Moreover, it was not long before they shed their “comprehensive” or multi-sided character and focused on academic training.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , Summer 1989 , pp. 237 - 259
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 by the History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Austin, A. G. and Selleck, R. J. W., The Australian Government School, 1830–1914, Select Documents with Commentary (Carlton, 1975); Goodman, R., Secondary Education in Queensland, 1860–1960 (Canberra, 1968); Sullivan, M., “Fifty Years of Opposition to Queensland's Grammar School,“ Melbourne Studies in Education (1974), 181–221; Bessant, Bob, “The Emergence of State Secondary Education,” in Australian Education in the Twentieth Century: Studies in the Development of State Education, ed. Cleverley, J. and Lawry, J. (Camberwell, 1972), 124–43; Selleck, R. J. W., Frank Tate: A Biography (Carlton, 1982); Report (Wyndham) of the Committee Appointed to Survey Secondary Education in New South Wales (Sydney, 1958); MacKinnon, Alison, One Foot on the Ladder: Origins and Outcomes of Girls’ Secondary Schooling in South Australia (St. Lucia, 1984); Miller, Pavla, Long Division: State Schooling in South Australian Society (Netley, 1986); Katz, Michael B., The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts (Boston, 1968).Google Scholar

2 Bessant, B., “The Influence of the ‘Public Schools’ on the Early High Schools of Victoria,“ History of Education Review 13 (No. 1, 1984): 45–57; Bessant, B., Schooling in the Colony and State of Victoria (Melbourne, 1983); Selleck, , Frank Tate, 154ff, 182–83, 194; Teese, R., “The Evolution of the Victorian Secondary School System from Depression to Recession,” Cultural Politics, Melbourne Working Papers Series 5 (Melbourne, 1984); Sherington, G., Petersen, R. C., and Brice, I., Learning to Lead: A History of Girls’ and Boys’ Corporate Secondary Schools in Australia (Sydney, 1987).Google Scholar

3 Sinclair, W. A., “Aspects of Economic Growth, 1900–1930,“ in Aspects of the Australian Economy, ed. Boxer, A. H., 2d ed. (Melbourne, 1969), 101–12; Boehm, E. A., Twentieth Century Economic Development in Australia, 2d ed. (Melbourne, 1979); Sinclair, W. A., The Process of Economic Development in Australia (Melbourne, 1976); Royal Commission on Technical Education, Progress Report on Primary Instruction, Victorian Parliamentary Papers (Melbourne, 1899).Google Scholar

4 Selleck, , Frank Tate 163–64; Badcock, A. M., “The Secondary Division,“ in Vision and Realisation: A Centenary History of State Education in Victoria, ed. Blake, L. J., 3 vols. (Melbourne, 1973), 1: 473–80, 502–4.Google Scholar

5 Bessant, B., “Education and Politics in the Development of the Education Systems of New South Wales and Victoria, 1900–1940, with Particular Reference to Post–Primary Education“ (Ph.D. diss., Monash University, 1971), 304, 328–29; Teese, R., “The Growth and Decline of the Victorian Government Secondary School, 1954–81,“ Melbourne Working Papers 4 (1982–83): 126–27; Bessant, Schooling, 149.Google Scholar

6 Unpublished enrollment returns to Victorian government secondary and technical schools conserved in Archive of Pupil Statistics of Victorian Departmental Post–Primary Schools (1946–1985), School of Education, University of Melbourne; Australian Bureau of Statistics, Victoria, Historical Statistics of Victoria, catalogue no. 1309.2 (Melbourne, 1986).Google Scholar

7 Report of the Minister of Education for the Year 1948–49, and Report of the Council of Public Education, 1948–49, Victorian Parliamentary Papers, 1949; Report of the Minister of Education, 1946–47, Victorian Parliamentary Papers, 1947; and Educational Gazette and Teachers’ Aid, 17 Mar. 1948.Google Scholar

8 Bessant, B. and Spaull, A., Politics of Schooling (Carlton, 1976); Teese, R., “The Evolution,“ 125–67.Google Scholar

9 On the data base and statistical methodology, see Teese, R., “Regional Differences in High and Technical School Demand in Melbourne, 1951–1985,“ Austrialian Geographical Studies 25 (Oct. 1987): 84–101.Google Scholar

10 Report (Ramsay) of the Committee on State Education in Victoria (Melbourne, 1960), 151.Google Scholar

11 On the social and academic enrollment in technical schools, see Garrett, A. W., “Some Relationships between Intelligence, School Type, and Father's Occupational Status,“ Curriculum Research Bulletin 2 (June 1970): 73–74; Balson, M., “Culturally Deprived Children in Victorian Schools,” in Sociology of Education: A Book of Readings Pertinent to the Australian Education System, ed. Katz, F. M. and Browne, R. K. (Melbourne, 1970), 237, 239.Google Scholar

12 For the place of girls’ schools in contemporary administrative perspective, see Bessant, B., “Domestic Science Schools and Women's Place,“ Australian Journal of Education 20 (No. 1, 1976): 1–9; Report of the Minister of Education, 1948–49, Victorian Parliamentary Papers, 1949, 17–19.Google Scholar

13 Dow, Gwyneth M. et al., Parent, Pupil, and School: Victoria's Education System (Melbourne, 1966), 50–51; Branson, Jan and Miller, Donald B., Class, Sex, and Education in Capitalist Society (Malvern, 1979), 74–76; Lane, Robert, “Unstreaming English Secondary Schools,“ The Secondary Teacher (Sept 1969): 15–22; Dow, Gwyneth M., “Streaming,” The Secondary Teacher (Nov.–Dec. 1969): 17–28; Adam, R., “Full Stature for the Underprivileged,” in Australian Council for Educational Research, Each to His Full (Melbourne, 1968), 66.Google Scholar

14 For contemporary levels of grade-repeating in South Australia and Tasmania, see Australian Council for Educational Research, “An Examination of Some Aspects of Grade Placement of Children,” ACER Information Bulletin 17 (Melbourne, [1949]). Victorian data on age-for-grade retardation can be found in the official Educational Gazette and Teachers’ Aid at about two-year intervals; Barcan, A., A History of Australian Education (Melbourne, 1980), 323–24.Google Scholar

15 Dow et al., Parent, Pupil, and School, 58ff; Blackmore, Jill, “Schooling for Work: Gender Differentiation in Commercial Education in Victoria, 1935–1960,“ History of Education Review 16 (No. 1, 1987): 39; Branson, and Miller, , Class, Sex, and Education, 75, 86–87; Martin, Jean, “Sex Differences in Educational Qualifications,” Melbourne Studies in Education (Melbourne, 1972), 102–3, 115.Google Scholar

16 Badcock, , “The Secondary Division,“ 556.Google Scholar

17 Calculated from University of Melbourne, Handbook of Public and Matriculation Examinations for December 1949 and February 1950 (Carlton, 1948), and Victorian Universities and Schools Examinations Board, Handbook of Directions and Prescriptions for 1969 (Melbourne, 1968); Martin, Jean, “Sex Differences,“ 103.Google Scholar

18 Teese, R., “The Evolution,” 140–41; idem, “Regional Differences,“ 96–97.Google Scholar

19 For some recent cross-sectional studies, see Johns, G. T., The Spatial Structure of Educational Opportunities (, Monash University, 1976); Ross, K. N., Farish, S., and Plunkett, M., Indicators of Socio-Economic Disadvantage for Australian Schools (Gee-long, 1988), ch. 2.Google Scholar

20 Wykes, Olive and King, M. G., Teaching of Foreign Languages in Australia (Hawthorn, 1968), 114; Fensham, P. J., “The Distribution of Commonwealth Scholarships in Victoria,“ Australian Journal of Education 9 (No. 3, 1965): 239–54.Google Scholar

21 Bourdieu, Pierre and Passeron, Jean-Claude, The Inheritors: French Students and Their Relation to Culture (Chicago, 1979), ch. 1.Google Scholar

22 Department of Urban and Regional Development, Melbourne Western Region: An Initial Discussion Report (Canberra, 1974), 35, 55; Neutze, Max, Australian Urban Policy (Sydney, 1978), 51.Google Scholar

23 Report of the Minister of Education, 1953–54, Victorian Parliamentary Papers, 1954, p. 22; Moore, W. C., A Survey of Commercial Education in Melbourne, 1952 (B.Ed. Investigation, University of Melbourne, 1952), 19; English, June, “Brunswick Girls’ High School: A Personal View,“ in The Urban School, ed. Claydon, L. F. (Carlton, 1975), 129, 138, 140.Google Scholar

24 Inch, J. F. A., Melbourne High School and State Secondary Education in Victoria (, University of Melbourne, 1974), 286; Phelan, W. M., An Investigation into the Most Suitable Age of Commencing at the Primary School and the Subsequent School History of the Age Groups Involved (B.Ed. Investigation, University of Melbourne, 1936).Google Scholar

25 Teese, Richard, “The Traditional Structure of the University Market in Australia,“ The Australian Universities Review 29 (No. 1, 1966): 17–21.Google Scholar