Education
Ballarat is home to two universities—the University of Ballarat and the Ballarat campus of the Australian Catholic University.
The University of Ballarat originated as the Ballarat School of Mines, founded in 1870 and once affiliated with the University of Melbourne. The university consists of six campuses, three of which are in Ballarat—two in the city (Camp Street and SMB campuses) and the main campus in Mount Helen, approximately 6 kilometres (3.7 miles) southeast of the city.
The Australian Catholic University's Ballarat campus began life as the Aquinas Training College run by the Ballarat East Sisters of Mercy in 1909. It is ACU's only rural campus that is located outside of a capital ciy in Australia.
Ballarat has four State Government-operated secondary schools of which the academically selective Ballarat High School (established in 1907) is the oldest and the only state school member of the Ballarat Associated Schools. The other schools are Sebastopol College, Mount Clear College and Ballarat Secondary College. Ballarat Secondary College was formed in 1994 by the amalgamation of Ballarat East Secondary College, Wendouree Secondary College and Midlands Secondary College.
Two private day and boarding schools in Ballarat Clarendon College and Ballarat and Queens Anglican Grammar School provide education from Preschool to Year 12. Both of these co-educational schools are classified as academically excellent as the only Ballarat schools to be ranked on the tables of the top 100 Victorian schools based on median VCE scores and percentage of scores of 40 and above. In 2010, Clarendon was placed at number 11 just below Melbourne Grammar and above The Geelong College, Scotch College and Haileybury College. Ballarat Grammar was placed at number 59 just below Wesley College and above University High, Ivanhoe Grammar, Geelong Grammar and Tintern.
The city is well serviced by Catholic schools, with eight primary schools and three secondary colleges which include the all-boys St Patrick's College, the all-girls Loreto College and the co-educational Damascus College, which was formed by the amalgamation of St Martin's in the Pines, St Paul's Technical School and Sacred Heart College in 1995.
Ballarat has several public libraries, the largest and most extensive of which is the City of Ballarat Library, run by the Central Highlands Regional Library Corporation and located on Creswick Road. Another library service is provided by the Ballarat Mechanics' Institute in Sturt Street, which is the oldest library in the city and a significant heritage site; it contains a collection of historic, archival and rare reference material as well as more general books.
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Famous quotes containing the word education:
“Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“Infants and young children are not just sitting twiddling their thumbs, waiting for their parents to teach them to read and do math. They are expending a vast amount of time and effort in exploring and understanding their immediate world. Healthy education supports and encourages this spontaneous learning.”
—David Elkind (20th century)