Education in Victoria - History

History

Prior to 1872 religious/denominational schools were maintained separately from government schools. The Denominational School Board provided for denominational schools and the National School Board, later the Board of Education, provided government sponsored secular education. In 1872, following growing dissatisfaction with State aid to religious schools and the burgeoning cost of funding and administering a dual school system, the government introduced free, compulsory and secular education and established the first Education Department. The Department became the employer of government teachers and Victoria had a Minister for Education. State aid to denominational schools ended in 1874.

The 'free, secular and compulsory' Education Act of 1872 put Victorian education in a legislative context that would continue for more than 100 years. It created the Education Department of Victoria under a Cabinet Minister. It also took away power from local government "and parents, withdrew State aid from church schools, centralised recruitment, training and dispersal of teachers, separated secular from religious instruction, abolished fees and mandated attendance for children between the ages of 6 and 15".

"The depression of the 1890s left the teaching service demoralised. Buildings deteriorated and the curriculum stagnated until 1902 when Frank Tate was appointed Victoria's first director of education, charged with implementing the recommendations of the 1899 Fink Royal Commission to modernise the system. Tate became the apostle of a child-centred pedagogy, introducing kindergarten methods into the Infant Departments and broadening the primary curriculum to include the manual arts, elementary science, music, literature, history and physical education."

After World War II the baby boom and postwar immigration precipitated a crisis in Victoria's schools. In the new suburbs of Melbourne children were crowded into large classes in church halls and other temporary accommodation until schools could be completed, while the old brick schools of the inner suburbs struggled to accommodate large numbers of children from non-English-speaking backgrounds. As high schools extended across the city, primary schools, stripped of grades 7 and 8, no longer provided their pupils' total education experience. An acute shortage of teachers saw married women cajoled to return to the classroom, although without the benefit of permanent employment. The 1970s saw Victoria's primary schools transformed with a new flowering of child-centred pedagogy, school-based curriculum development, multiculturalism, a more genuine partnership with parents, a more militant brand of teacher unionism and the dedication of married women teachers who were readmitted on a permanent basis in 1956.

From 1979 to 1982 the Hamer Liberal government initiated and implemented the most significant and far-reaching reorganisation of the Victorian Education Department in the 20th Century. The Hon Alan Hunt as Minister of Education (1979 – 1982) and the Hon Norman Lacy as Assistant Minister of Education (1979 – 1980) and Minister for Educational Services (1980 – 1982) were jointly responsible for the reform policy development process and the early stages of its implementation. Together they made a formidable team in the pursuit of their mission to reform the administration of the centralised and inefficient Department. Hunt appointed Lacy Chairman of the Ministerial Consultative Committee that steered the project in its early phase and the Implementation Steering Committee later (Lacy's managerial and educational philosophy are found in speeches here: and here:) Lacy pulled together an impressive group of people from academia and business to assist him as well as PA Management Consultants. The Government legislated - at the end of 1981 - to scrap the teaching divisions (Primary, Secondary and Technical) and to remove the statutory bodies (The Committee of Classifiers and the Teachers’ Tribunal). Hunt and Lacy sought and obtained the support of the Labor opposition and the National Party. When the Cain Labor government won office at the April 1982 election the new Minister of Education, the Hon Robert Fordham (1982 – 1985) instituted a policy review by a Ministerial Review Committee headed by Dr Ken McKinnon. The Committee made up mostly of teacher union and parent organisation representatives recommended modifications which Fordham went on to incorporate as he completed the implementation of the restructuring of the Department generally as recommended by the White Paper. Fordham had supported the general thrust of the reform process in opposition and followed through on the project when in government.