Convicts & Colonials: Education

The first school in Queensland opened in 1826, two years after the first settlement in what was to become Queensland. Mrs. Esther Roberts opened the first school with just 16 students who were the children of soldiers and convicts in Moreton Bay.

In Ipswich's early years education was not considered as a necessity, with education being primarily for the wealthy in private houses or church funded denominational schools. A school was established in Bell Street in 1847 but it closed after two months. In 1850, the Council voted and passed a proposal for a National School. The National Education Board stated that they would pay two thirds of the cost of a National School, this being the land and building, school supplies and teacher as long as the town/parents contributed a third of the total building cost and guaranteed attendance of at least 30 pupils. A building fund was set up and soon one hundred pounds had been collected from the town, so a request for a grant was sent to the government at the time in New South Wales. In June 1851 a reply came granting one acre of land situated on the east side of Gordon Street, bounded by Limestone and Brisbane Streets. It was not until 1861 that a National School was opened in Ipswich.

Our best source of information about what Ipswich was like in the early colonial era can be found in the pages of early newspapers. The Empire in 1855 carried an article about Moreton Bay that compared Brisbane and Ipswich.

The two public schools - the English Church, and the Roman Catholic - are in connection with the Denominational Board, and receive the teachers' stripends from Government. The former is held in the church, and has an average attendance of 73 children; the duties of instruction are divided between the incumbent and an assistant schoolmaster. The children belonging to other denominations are not required to receive sectarian instruction, and are only taught the simpler portions of scripture doctrine. The Roman Catholic school, which is held in a slab building near the church, has an average attendance of 57 children. No religious lessons are taught in this school except to the Catholic children, the Protestant children being employed on other lessons when such instruction is going on. Both schools present the same feature, as noticed in the Brisbane schools, namely the scholars being nearly all young. Much has been said of the practical value of education in protecting youths from profligate habits, but it is apparent that the education which is to present a counter-charm to sensual temptations must be something more matured than what is learned in these schools. The important parts which many of the children will have to sustain in the future affairs of this district, the responsible duties they will have to discharge as jurors and electors, require that they should receive while at school some groundwork of mental training and useful knowledge, to qualify them to exercise an intelligent judgment. In few cases is there any absolute necessity for withdrawing a lad from school to require his contribution to the support of the family. The general well-to-do condition of the working classes in Ipswich forbids such a supposition. The practice of taking children prematurely from their lessons is only to be accounted for on the feeling natural to parents that boys on arriving at a certain age and size ought to be put to some useful occupation, and girls employed in domestic duties; unaware of, rather than indifferent to, the value of prolonged instruction. Should the teacher advise the continuance of the children at school, his interference might be construed into his reluctance to lose their weekly fees. This would naturally prevent any urgent remonstrance on behalf of their being retained in school on the part of the only person likely to appreciate the advantage of their being well taught. I may here remark that whether it be from want of interest or from some other cause, I have not either in Brisbane or in Ipswich encountered any opponents of the Denominational system of education, or advocates for a comprehensive National system. But I have more than once heard it urged against the breaking up of Denominational schools, that but for them the children would receive no definite religious teaching whatever. In schools where the education is purely elementary, and where the children of different sects are not taught the religious doctrines of the teacher, the peculiarities of the Denominational system cannot be very mischievously developed. A private school, where the instruction is of a more advanced character, is conducted by Mr. F. Whitehead, and contains about twenty pupils.