The Nursery and Kindergarten ‘Centre’ The Princes Hill schools have enjoyed a long, friendly and beneficial relationship with the Melbourne City Council. Individual incidents of co-operation include the Council’s donation of trees planted on Arbor Day 1924 at Pigdon Street, its closure or part-closure of several streets around the schools to reduce through traffic in the 1960s and 1980s, and its provision of access to Princes Park to help alleviate the shortage of schoolyard space at Princes Hill Secondary College. (Another lasting co-operative enterprise has been the Nursery and Kindergarten Centre. The Centre, probably the first instance of educational planning and responsibility by any municipal authority in Australia, was opened on 20 November 1929.’ It evolved from a scheme proposed by the Melbourne City Council’s Health Department to found and support a system of kindergartens throughout its area.2 According to an agreement between the Melbourne City Council and the Education Department, the Council built a largish annexe to the Infant Department at Pigdon Street, while the Education Department supplied the teachers.’ The Centre was open to children under the age of four and a half. Intent on representing a cross-section of the community, the kindergarten only accepted children recommended by the Health Department Medical Officers; the school staff had no say in the selection.
Kindergarten Class at Pigdon Street, c. 1940.
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