In the last week of January or the first week of February each year, Australian primary and secondary students gather to commence the year’s schooling. Most of Princes Hill’s students were within a comfortable walking distance. Some lived further away, but for various reasons attended Princes Hill. Beryl walked from Barkly Street, East Brunswick, because her cousins attended Princes Hill. Eve and Vera, who lived in Rathdowne Street near Richardson Street, had attended Lee Street School until the antics of a violent teacher drove them away. Neither knows why their parents chose Princes Hill instead of the nearer South Brunswick School. Amirah scrambled across the forbidden railway tracks paralleling Park Street to take the shortcut to Pigdon Street.1 Others walked from Nicholson Street, Royal Parade, and parts of East and South Brunswick. In the early 1940s, as automobile traffic increased, a number of parents got together and hired ‘Aunty Lina’, the ‘lolly-pop lady’ of North Carlton, to collect their children and accompany them to and from school, and especially to help them cross busy Lygon Street, which as yet had no traffic lights. Aunty Lina’s journey extended along Pigdon Street as far as Nicholson. The lollies she provided her charges were an added treat.2 The introduction of the Central and High Schools extended the intake net considerably. Sam transferred from 132 Lee Street, and Cliff walked from North Melbourne, saving his tram fares. My sister and I travelled by tram and bus from North Richmond. When Andrew’s parents shifted from North Carlton to Murrumbeena, he chose to remain at Princes Hill High School. His daily train and tram journey to school took ninety minutes.
Today, the abolition of the zoning system at the primary school and the convenience of private transport the daily car parade of drop—offs and pick-ups has caused concerns of safety — attract students from various parts of Melbourne. The farthest afield is Wheeler’s Hill.
The first bell at 9.00 a.m. welcomed the ‘Prinny Hill’ hordes thronging into the tiny playground. Heard clearly across the neighbourhood, the bell prompted stragglers to dash. John, who lived behind the school, was sometimes still in bed when the first bell rang, and yet could arrive in time. Monitors marshalled late-comers to the Head Teacher’s office, where excuses were ignored and punishments meted out.3
The 9.15 bell summoned assembly, and children lined up according to grades in the schoolyard. The Monday morning assembly was the ‘full affair’. At attention, students honoured the National Anthem; the boys saluted the flag; and the school, in unison, with right hand firmly placed over each heart, recited the pledge that has become inscribed in the memory of many:
I love God and my country,
I honour the flag,
I serve the King (Queen),
And cheerfully obey my parents, teachers and the laws.
The weekly school business and sports announcements over, the gathering was inspected. At 9.25, the grades marched into class, accompanied by kettle drums and bugles.
Each Head Teacher stamped his own personality on the school and the assembly. Head Teacher Mylrea was ‘all show’. Conditioned by his military past, he drilled his school like platoons. When there were complaints about the school band from a local resident whose nerves were shot by the beat of the big drum, the rattle of five kettles and the discordant blare of nine bugles, four times a day, Mylrea obstinately denied the charge, claiming that the community was proud of its band.4 A similar complaint against Head Teacher Hart in 1943 was more successful. The Monday morning marching competition between the school sports houses was stopped and the amount of ‘brass and wind reduced.5 According to one student, Head Teacher Smith was more reserved. He delivered a ‘simple address every Monday morning and then retreated to his office, where he essentially remained inaccessible to students’.6 Once in class, the serious work began. Instruction continued until 3.30 p.m., punctured by the brief morning and afternoon recesses, and by lunch between 12.15 and 1.25 p.m. While Miss Smart, a junior teacher at the school in the early 1930s, felt sorry for the children who were squeezed into inadequate classrooms, most ex-students do not remember noticing their discomfort. Rather, they ‘just grew up with the situation’.7
The classroom was not always an attractive or happy place. Dusty, splintered floorboards prickled the backsides of the infants who sat on the hall floor. Large photographs of past head teachers looked down from the walls.8 Before the introduction of twin desks, Eve and her cronies had to clamber over the long form desks to take their places. Few decorations adorned the drab walls. Only the blackboards of the infants’ classrooms were gaily decorated with coloured chalk drawings of flowers, birds and animals.
Puny fires in small grates provided the only warmth during the cold days and months of winter. The cleaner lit and fed the fire in the morning, but the fuel usually ran out before the afternoon.9 The old stone stairs at Arnold Street, eroded by thousands of tramping feet, remain a vivid memory in the minds of many ex-students. By the time Princes Hill became a high school, the stairs had been worn into hills and valleys.10 Students who attended school at the various leased buildings would not have been comfortable. Not intended as classrooms, the rooms were without adequate facilities, particularly for heating. The occasional broken window pane added to the cold. Equally inept were the temporary pavilion ‘open-air’ classrooms deposited at the school in 1915. Designed to test the strongest constitution, each pavilion building had three walls boarded to the height of one metre, then canvas blinds above. They were described as ‘draughty shacks’ and ‘freezing chambers’. Students froze in them during winter and sweltered in the excessive summer heat.11
The Infants, or ‘the babies’, enjoyed a less raucous ritual than their elders. While at Arnold Street, they assembled and entered from the Paterson Street entrance straight into the hall. At Pigdon Street, children could begin their schooling in the nursery, pass through kindergarten and then commence in the infants. In the kindergarten, facilities such as desks, hand-basins and toilets were scaled down to cater for the young children. Children sang, painted, played with dolls and toys, sat on the floor to listen to stories, and rested on sleeping mats in the afternoon.12 Seated on the hall floor, the infants began their school day with Morning Prayer, followed by breathing and voice exercises, birthdays, nature study of items brought by the children themselves, the theme for the day, such as shells or farm products, and singing announcements. Finally each grade marched into the classroom to begin the day’s work.13 Amirah Inglis writes vividly of her experiences at Pigdon Street, and of her first meetings with the head mistress, ‘a formidable lady called Miss Horner’, dressed in ‘a costume and hat, which turned out to be her regular daily outfit’, and her teacher, ‘a sweet-faced lady called Miss Whitbourne with dark hair arranged in a low bun on her neck’.14 Mr Hollylea also remembers his first day at school: ‘Supervised by Lillian Horner, the preps sat on the wooden floor listening to a lady with a nice voice singing about a little boy who ‘asked a little girl to marry him. Yes, she replied, when the apples grow on a Lilac Tree’. The day would then extend into various lessons and activities: singing, paper folding, clay and plasticine modelling and basic reading and writing.15 Miss Emily Hyem collected articles from children and established a small museum.16 Good work was rewarded. Miss Hyem gave biscuits to the best readers, and Miss Horner gave Jess a penny for spelling ‘cat’ correctly. This being the most money Jess had ever had, she quickly spent it on an ice-cream wafer.
The kindergarten grade, established at Princes Hill in 1899, became the basis of the school’s academic and educational reputation. Kindergarten classes in Victorian schools had begun in the nineteenth century as a result of the interest of the Minister for Public Instruction, Dr Pearson, and Inspector-General Thomas Brodribb. In 1888, Pearson had sponsored Mrs Goulden to come from England to introduce the Frobelian kindergarten methods and teaching. Brodribb’s advocacy of the need of kindergarten teaching before the Fink Commission (l889) ensured its inclusion in the Education Act (1901). Kindergarten teaching, it was argued, tended to interest children in lessons, to make their fingers dexterous, to stimulate their love of activity and to exercise their constructive powers.17
At Princes Hill, the initiative came from Inspector Swindley who in June 1899 advised that flaps be fitted to the back of the galleries for kindergarten work. The school’s kindergarten teaching had gained impetus with the appointment of Miss Hyem as First Infant Mistress in 1898. A teacher since 1879, Miss Hyem came to Princes Hill with an acknowledged reputation of exceptional skill in infant teaching, and an undertaking to instruct student teachers in kindergarten work.18
By 1902, kindergarten teaching and training were firmly entrenched at Princes Hill. Threats to erase the central infant hall from the proposed third phase of additions to the Arnold Street building were quickly squashed.19 Plans to transfer Miss Hyem elsewhere to found a formal training centre were also thwarted. Instead, Princes Hill was proclaimed an Infant Training School.20
The erection of the Pigdon Street building as the Infant School confirmed the role of kindergarten teaching at Princes Hill. The new building conformed to the specifications of the 1906 and 1910 congresses. The pride of this building is the central assembly hall surrounded by classrooms, and the attractive stained-glass windows, a common feature in hall design after 1915.21
Miss Hyem’s long service ended on 3 September 1915 when ill health forced her into retirement.22 The quality of her work ensured that her successor would be equally talented. She was Lillian Horner.
By the time she arrived at Princes Hill on 8 October 1915, Lillian Horner had served at some sixteen schools. Her whole career was accompanied by laudatory assessments from Inspectors who commended her zeal, energy, interest, management, progressive methods, ability to sustain the interests of the young pupils, and her excellent direction of junior teachers.
While at Princes Hill, she entered the kindergarten course conducted by Miss E. Pye, Mistress of Method at the Melbourne Teachers College, and in 1917-8 she gained the Infant Teachers’ Diploma First Class with First Honours, as well as presenting for a number of University Subjects. During her years of training she also gained the Certificate of Competency in Voice Production, the Licence to Teach Singing, and qualified to teach gymnastics. In 1932, she transferred from Princes Hill to Camberwell. On 8 March 1938, only one week after her retirement, Miss Horner was struck down and fatally injured by a car only streets from her home.
A woman of great energy and many interests, Miss Horner founded the Mothers’ Story-Telling Club at Princes Hill in 1917, and in 1927 shared in the foundation of the Infant Mistresses’ Club.23 Her cultural interests included membership of the Australian Reading Union, the Melbourne Shakespeare Society, the Australian Literature Society, the Lindsay Gordon Society, the English Speaking Union, and the League of Nations Union. In 1914, together with Captain Dwyer, she established the State Schools’ Patriotic Depot, and organised the State Schools’ War Relief Fund. During the war this work was unofficially rewarded with a one penny souvenir stamp or letter seal, referred to by philatelists as ‘Cinderellas’. Based on the then current Australian penny King George V portrait stamp, the stamp substituted Miss Horner’s portrait for that of His Majesty. Between 1929 and 1934, Miss Horner was a conscientious and respected council member of the Victorian Teachers’ Union, as well as contributing regularly to the Teachers’ journal under the pen—name ‘Marcella’.
In 1940, officers of the Education Department, teachers and friends established the ‘Lillian Horner Memorial Prize’ to honour her outstanding work and to perpetuate her memory. The annual book prize is presented to the teacher of the lower grades for ‘the most distinctive work’ in the primary school. The first was awarded to Eva Wilcock of Preston Primary School. Subsequent recipients included Miss Emily Miller (1958) and Miss Marion Walker (1959). Both had worked with Miss Horner at Princes Hill, and both succeeded her as Infant Mistress there.24
The organisation of the school and the curricula taught were determined by the Education Department. In 1890, the school was divided into grades 1 to 6. Grades 7 and 8 were added in 1912. Children began school at the minimum age of six and were legally bound to stay until the age of fourteen. An average age was determined for each grade.25 Each grade was divided into levels based on ability, and identified by letters according to a system introduced in 1909 to organise larger schools. Children were expected to attend forty days per quarter of_ the year. Annual summer holidays were four weeks.26
After the 1906 extensions, the Infant Department at Princes Hill lay adjacent to the hall in the north wing. The Junior and Middle departments occupied the remaining ground—floor classrooms. The Upper and Supplementary grades were upstairs. Traditionally, grade 6 occupied the bell-tower room, and Miss Shaw had the room at the head of the northern staircase fronting onto Arnold Street. In 1924, the Infant and Junior School was moved to Pigdon Street. The Education Act (1872) aimed to introduce secular, free and compulsory education in Victoria. In essence, however, this ideal was designed to provide the basic requirements of arithmetic, writing and reading to the children of the economically deprived. As a standard, senior pupils were expected to be able to ‘read any book or newspaper’. Much of the early education simply continued on from the Common School programmes introduced before 1872. Little room was left for curriculum experimentation. From the moment children entered the classroom, teachers demanded absolute silence and tolerated nothing less. In the words of the editor of the Carlton Gazette, the teacher was ‘the little monarch in the land of school’, who had ‘complete power over little people’.27 Perfecting the 3 Rs occupied the morning.28 Rules of grammar were indelibly imprinted in students’ memories; one ex-student proudly recalls Princes Hill’s renown as the ‘grammar school’. Teachers concentrated on simple reading and spelling, writing of sentences on slate, and arithmetic addition, subtraction, multiplication. The pupils’ days were filled with endless sessions of simultaneous rote learning. They parsed sentences, recited multiplication tables over and over and over again, memorised rhymes and the names of countries, places, oceans, historical events, kings and battles.29 Self-expression by the children was discouraged, as was originality by the teacher. Endless repetitive lines of inane sentences were practised to perfect students’ handwriting. As beginners, students scrawled their ABCs on small individual blackboards with chalk. A dirty rag and spittle were used to erase mistakes. With experience and age, they graduated to red-and-blue-lined exercise books, steel-nib pens and ink. Two blue lines inside the two red lines marked the prescribed spaces for letter sizes. Day in, day out, the monotonous routine continued. Understandably, many ex-students are rather hazy about the content of the subjects they were studying. Rather, incidents stand out: for example, George Moore banging Doris’s face into the blackboard because she could not understand theorems in geometry; or her amazement at realising years later that England had not quite won all those battles she had learned about in British History. The inventory of school equipment and teaching materials presented to Head Teacher Russell in 1890 was basic. It included two sets of Nelson’s Tables, two Alphabet cards, a manual of health, and maps of Australia, Australasia, Europe, Asia, Africa, America and the World.30 The subjects taught in 1889 included grammar, geography, especially of Victoria and Australia, history, ‘morals and manners’, drill, needlework, ‘reason’, natural science, physics and biology.
The inventory of readers presented to Head Teacher Skewes in 1898 reflects the expanded curriculum at the school. The texts listed include multiple Royal Readers for every class, Smith, Colenzo and Collins’ Arithmetic, mental arithmetic books, an Australian Geography, Sutherland’s Geography, Sullivan’s Generalized Geography, spelling books, Stewart’s Physics, temperance primers, chemical apparatus, and drawing models.31
Although the Education Department began with a policy of providing free books to students, parents were required to pay for their children’s books after 1878.32 It is interesting to look at the cache of books belonging to Kingsley and Muriel Dunn, students at Princes Hill in the 1920s. Their library included Our Pets by C. Long, Spelling Rules and Grammar by W. Gillies, Simple Studies in British History, 1603-I923 (grade 8), the Reader, Cross Purposes (grade 3), the A. L. Print-Writing Copy Book (grade 8), ABC Zoo Book, Macmillan’s New Literary Readers, the Australian Junior Drawing Book, the Science Book, roneoed history notes with dates to be memorised, Little Boy Blue Nursery Rhymes, Whitcombe’s Object Drawing Book, Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, the Australian Copy Book (grades 7 and 8), E. Pye’s Second Infant Reader, E. Lay’s Class book of English History, The Tudors, Federal Geography (grade 6), Federal Arithmetic (grades 4 and 6), Lord Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome, E. Lay’s English Composition, W. Gillies’ Stories in British History 1558-1901 and an atlas. A copy of the School Paper, issued monthly for one penny and used for supplementary reading studies, had general articles of educational interest, stories, spelling exercises, information about scholarships, fees, and articles on Anzac and Empire Days. Muriel’s homework book for grade 7 shows spelling, grammar, music, arithmetic, algebra, geography, composition and poetry. Students who completed their exercises were rewarded with Merit stamps.
Frank Tate encouraged the introduction of educational reforms during his years as Director of Education. Tate was intent on revitalising learning and freeing the schools from rote memorisation. Scholars in the infant grades, he argued, should be exposed to many and varied stimuli. Teachers must encourage individual mental development, stimulate intelligent thought and expression, and guide the students to think and act for themselves. Inspectors must help improve teachers’ methods rather than intimidate them and stifle experimentation. The senior grades would continue in this vein. Australian geography and history were increasingly nurtured. Nature studies were introduced, with an emphasis on excursions into the country to study geology, geography, nature study and history. New texts in all subjects were regularly adopted. In-service training was established to help teachers develop courses that ‘satisfied not only the intellectual and moral interests of a child, but also aesthetic and constructive interests’.33
The Fourth Class at Arnold Street, 1903. There are 81 boys in the class.
‘Physical training, including daily exercises, swimming, class drill and gymnastics, continued for the whole school. Yet, oddly enough, when Head Teacher Sebire appointed a Physical Training teacher in 1916, the Department refused to pay the costs.34 Tate’s attempt to reform spelling in 1912 for example, by dropping the ‘u’ in words such as ‘colour’ and introducing the use of ‘-ize’, ‘program’, ‘jail’ met considerable community opposition, (although Sebire for one did adopt the suggestions), and was dropped.35 Promotion to the upper or ‘big’ school (grades 3 to 6) brought more advanced work in the same subjects. Graduates of grade 6, and after 1912 grade 8, were presented with a Merit Certificate, which had been introduced in 1890. The ‘Qualifying. Certificate’, introduced in 1911, allowed the recipient to continue to higher elementary studies. The top two students of the school were awarded gold and silver medals respectively.36
In 1912, Tate reformed the system of promoting pupils. Hitherto, pupils were promoted when the Inspector visited and tested the children. Now, pupils would be promoted according to ability by the Head Teacher at the end of each year, in readiness for the next.37 Change, however, came slowly to the classroom. Grammar was still based on ‘reason’ and emphasised correct rather than creative writing. Silent, rote learning and intimidation still dominated teachers’ methods. Major curriculum reforms the result of contributions by all Victorian teachers were introduced in 1934 under the guidance of McRae, Director of Education from 1933 to 1936. According to McRae, the emphasis of education ‘had shifted, in the minds of the planners, from the teacher to the child as a learner’. Teachers now had freedom to adjust their courses to encourage children and stimulate them to ‘exercise their own powers of thought, judgement and reasoning to establish truths for themselves’, to develop the natural gifts of the individual. The objectives to be pursued by Victorian primary schools were itemised in the Hadow Report (1932). These were: a) attention to health and hygiene, and physical fitness; b) command of fundamental processes such as writing, spelling, arithmetic, reading and grammar; c) effective and well-informed citizenship; d) worthy use of leisure; e) development of character, and recognition of moral and spiritual values; f) effective home membership; g) courteous demeanour and good manners; h) aesthetic appreciation, the acquisition of ‘certain skills’, and the application of art and good taste to everyday life. To this end, while grammar remained a formal discipline, arithmetic, art, music and social studies were adapted to modern educational trends. New textbooks, specially written to suit the new courses, were made available on the Free List during 1934.38
Another welcome outcome of the 1934 reforms was a growing concern within the Department about the dearth of libraries in state schools. Princes Hill, which had a skeletal library the result of Skewes’ efforts now benefited from Departmental largesse. Situated in a disused corridor, the library was the heart of the school and provided pleasure and inspiration for many of Princes Hill’s pupils. Money to buy books, however, came slowly. The Department did not adopt a recognisable policy of subsidising library purchases until the early 1940s. Prior to that, the school relied on donations, and on whatever money it could set aside. One benefactor was Robert Heatley Jr of Drummond Street, who provided valuable funds for library books.39
The innovations of Martin Hansen, who preceded McRae as Director of Education between 1928 and 1932, involved Princes Hill directly. Aware of the possible applications of new technologies in education, Hansen experimented with the use of moving pictures, radio broadcasts, gramophones and epidiascopes in schools. In 1930, the 12 to 14-year-old pupils at Princes Hill participated in an experimental programme of this kind. Films concerning economic geography, physiographic geography, physiology, nature studies, general science and composition were screened and commented upon by teachers.40 As students moved up from grade to grade, the subjects changed and the work increased in difficulty and quantity: Latin, French and algebra were added to the general course of English, geography, history, mental arithmetic and writing. When high-school subjects were adopted, Grades 7 and 8 were transformed into forms E and F. Pupils in these grades studied a second language, book-keeping and commercial work.41 Students who wished to sit for the scholarship examination attended extra classes each day for half an hour before school and half an hour during lunch. They studied Latin, algebra and Euclid. Slower students were placed together into a composite grade. The amount of homework set was regulated by the Department: only ten words of spelling and seven lines of arithmetic, three times per week.42 Teachers, however, often used homework as a means of punishment. The introduction of the ‘High School’ syllabus to grades 7 and 8 at Princes Hill was a significant step. In 1916, fifty four scholars entered form 1, selected from those in grades 7 and 8. They were students who had undertaken to pursue further education as preparation for the second year of the ‘high school’ course. Children who intended to leave school at the age of fourteen continued with grade 7 work.43 By 1924, the course was extended to form 2. In 1923, Princes Hill was chosen as one of three schools to experiment with a modified High School course for grades 6, 7, and 8, known as the Dalton Plan, and a special scholarship class. Six ‘Daltonised’ subjects were taught: written English, literature, mathematics, geography, history, and drawing. Specialist teachers were assigned and subject rooms established. New textbooks were bought. These included Lay’s Geography of Europe, Lay’s Grammar and Composition, High Roads of Literature, Federal Arithmetic, Progressive Arithmetic and The History of Australia and New Zealand. Student progress was monitored through assignments, completed by the students at their own pace. The Inspector’s report notes that the course encouraged initiative and self-reliance among the pupils. Two years later, however, Mylrea requested that the experiment be abandoned at Princes Hill. Believing that children planning to end their education at the elementary level were not benefiting from the new course, he reintroduced the ‘General Course of Study for the Elementary School’.44
In December 1931, Mylrea received a memorandum from the Department noting that High Schools in the vicinity were complaining that Princes Hill had included a second language, book—keeping and commercial work in its year 9 course. Mylrea’s defence illustrates his concern for students. In a climate of depression with little work available, he argued, he was offering scholars finishing year 8, especially boys, a future rather than a life of idleness. Year 9, he hoped, would entice pupils to return to school; it was not intended to compete with High Schools.45
Relief from the daily drudgery came when the drawing and singing teachers visited on their weekly rounds. John Summers, who was a friend of Fred McCubbin, Arthur Streeton and others of the Heidelberg School of artists, visited Princes Hill as an art teacher from the 1910s to 1924.46 Remembered fondly as ‘Daddy Summers’, the ‘doddering, seventy-year-old’ art master assigned his classes gum leaves to draw for still life.47 Each student paid one penny per lesson. If parents were unable to pay for the classes, free tuition was arranged by the Department.48 Equally exciting were the visits by various tradesmen such as the robust glass blower, and the impromptu lessons given by old ‘Daddy Carnell’, the school caretaker in the 1910s, whose expertise in the cultivation of silkworms became a kind of nature-study class.49
Older boys and girls were taught practical subjects. In 1901, ‘Sloyd’ (derived from the Swedish system of manual instruction in elementary woodwork and meaning skilful) was introduced to provide boys with moral, mental and physical training. These were to include order and exactness, perseverance and industry, self-reliance, accuracy and appreciation of symmetry, close attention to detail, observation, thoughtfulness and creativity, dexterity, and physical development.50 When Stokes’s boot factory in the lanes behind Arnold and Richardson Streets was purchased for £450 in 1911, it was outfitted for Sloyd downstairs and cookery upstairs.51 Sloyd included lessons in plan drawing, recognising the varieties of timber, the care and use of tools, drills in working techniques, and the making of models. Because only Australian timbers were to be used in the classroom, the woodwork teacher’s requisition in 1932 for yellow pine and red wood was replaced by the Education Department with Australian oak and hoop pine.52
When high schools were introduced, woodwork, together with mechanical drawing, metal working and so forth, became part of the junior syllabus. I can well remember my own dismal efforts at sawing wood, hammering nails and turning wood. I hate to think where the discarded tie-racks, lopsided candlestick holders, rickety side tables and cutting-boards have ended up. While the boys developed dexterity of hand and eye, girls over the age of twelve were relegated to the kitchen and the house. Pressed by the Australian Institute of Domestic Economy, which argued that well-prepared wives, mothers and housekeepers would not be produced by the female instinct alone without proper instruction, the Education Department introduced courses to train working—class girls, in the art of home management and administration. (Middle-class girls, it was thought, would be indulging in less menial exercises such as singing, drawing and recitation).53 The Education Act (1910) formalised instruction in needlework, cookery and domestic economy,54 and manuals, equipment and specially trained teachers were dispatched to the schools.55
The cookery centre at Princes Hill was opened in 1917 under the direction of Miss Marjorie Gordon and served a number of neighbouring schools.56 ‘All sorts of things’ were learned. Beryl’s teacher, who shopped at the Victoria Market, taught girls to fillet garfish and how ‘to make one egg go the distance of three’: after beating, a part was used for fish dipping, a part to glaze pasties, and the reminder went into the ‘egg’ custard. Daily three-course lunches cooked by the girls were sold to local businessmen and teachers for nine pence (later 1/6). Profits went into the school fund.
The seriousness attached to the course by the Department is evident from the amount of administration required. There were a Teachers’ Time Book, a Monthly Cookery Certificate Book, a Receipts and Expenditure book, cookery practice registers, attendance returns, and accounts of the profits.
In 1964, the woodwork and cookery centre was shifted to the new high school building, and in 1966 ‘Domestic Arts’ was renamed ‘Home Economics’. Today, the gender division of subjects has partly broken down: boys attend home economics classes, and girls study woodwork.
Until the introduction of sewing classes at Princes Hill sometime in the 1930s, girls travelled to other schools, such as Rathdowne Street school and the Domestic Arts School in Bell Street, Fitzroy. When needlework classes commenced at Princes Hill, the school took needlework students from Lee Street, Faraday Street, South Brunswick, Teachers College Rural School and University High School. In 1940, Miss Williams was appointed to teach housewifery and laundry classes to grade 7 girls at Princes Hill.57
The education promised by the Act of 1872 was not only free and compulsory, but also ‘secular’. Consequently, Religious Instruction could not be taught in any Victorian state school during school hours. Under the close scrutiny of the politicians, the Department went to inordinate lengths to ensure compliance with the Act. In 1872, all references to Christ and Christianity were extirpated from the schoolbooks, and in 1908 the popular Children’s Encyclopaedia was withdrawn from school use because it included a story entitled ‘The Story of the Bible’.58 Religious Instruction, however, was permitted, if parents requested it, provided that it was taught outside school hours and the Instructor was not a member of the Education Department. The final decision was left to the Boards of Advice.59 Before 1910, Religious Instruction classes at Princes Hill were held on Friday afternoons after school between 3.30 and 4.00. Hours were then changed to Friday morning, 9.15 to 9.45. Nonparticipating children remained in the school yard, unless the weather was inclement.60
It was not until Wilfred Kent Hughes became Minister of Education in 1947 that positive steps were taken to alter these provisions of the Education Act. Blaming the lack of religious instruction for the rise of materialism in the community, Kent Hughes argued that Religious Instruction should be incorporated in state education, with the proviso that each school ensured liberty of conscience for teacher and child.61
More Religious Instruction classes were introduced as children of different nationalities and religious beliefs came to the school. Their activities too were supervised by the Education Department. The first Jewish Religious Instruction class at Princes Hill commenced in 1931 under the direction of Rabbi Bernstein. Having started classes at Princes Hill and Elwood without Departmental sanction, Rabbi Bernstein was instructed to suspend classes until a formal application had been approved by the Department.62 Other denominations, including Roman Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy and the Council for Christian Education in Schools, introduced Religious Instruction classes at the primary and secondary schools in the 1960s.