Central Board of Education (GA33)

Provision for a Central Board of Education was made in the Education Act No. 20 of 1851 which received assent on 2 January 1852 ('An Act to promote Education in South Australia by aids towards the erection of Schools and the payment of Stipends to Teachers') (1).

The Act established a Board 'not exceeding seven in number, to be selected by the Governor and Executive Council', and was set up to 'introduce and maintain good secular instruction, based on the Christian Religion'. (2) It was empowered to subsidize local communities on a pound basis for the purpose of creating so-called 'vested schools' (the property being by deed in the local body); it could licence school-houses and teachers, or withdraw licences, and fix the stipends of teachers; it could authorise District Councils to visit and inspect such schools; and it was undertake the building of a Normal School in Adelaide for training teachers. (3)

Nominations to the Board were made on 14 April 1852, and Francis S. Dutton (1818-1877) M.L.C. was elected as its first chairman. (4) The Board's correspondence was handled by its Education Office. Although the reforms introduced in 1851 were a distinct improvement over what had existed before, the Central Board soon ran into difficulties largely because it was unable to keep up with the public demand for schools. A new Education Act was on the programme of the Government for the first session of the first South Australian Parliament, but attention to more immediately pressing matters meant that it necessarily had to be put aside. (5)

Public agitation, however, continued and during the early 1870s new education bills were introduced and debated in Parliament. (6) On July 1874 education was placed under the supervision of the Minister of Justice and Education under provisions of the Constitution Amendment Act No. 5 of 1873. (7) The Central Board was replaced twenty-three years after it was first constituted by the Council of Education under the terms of the Education Act No. 11 of 1875.

Same agency as GRG50 - different archival control system.

References:

(1) South Australian Statutes, 1851;
(2) Ibid;
(3) Ibid;
(4) Government Gazette 1852, p. 244;
(5) H.T. Burgess, Cyclopedia of South Australia, vol. 1 (Adelaide, 1907) p.405;
(6) Colin Thiele, Grains of Mustard Seed, (Education Department, Adelaide, 1975) pp.1-4;
(7) South Australian Statutes.