Buildings from 1927 on. It opened in 1871 as the Boggo Road Primary School to serve the surrounding farming districts. School Road became a major thoroughfare. The arrival of the railway in 1884 saw the area start to change from rural to urban. It was renamed Yeronga School in 1886 and the site designated a School Reseve in 1895. Arbor Day trees were planted from 1892. The extension of the trams to Yeronga Park in 1915 led to more housing estates. Post-WWI, the school had a major expansion, with 4 new sectional classroom buildings added from 1927-33. A brick Infants School was opened in 1941 but was then closed from 1942-44 for use as an Army offices for a Petrol & Oil Depot. The post-WWII ‘Baby Boom’, caused further extensions to these builings and a Boulton & Paul building opened in 1954. This precinct has been a focal point for this community for nearly 150 years. Although Queensland education was influenced by the earlier establishment of National and Normal school system primary education was shaped by the Department of Public Instruction under the Education Act of 1875, whereby:

Primary education for children aged from 6 to 12 was to be compulsory.(This provision was not fully implemented until 1900.)

Education was to be secular, i.e. under the control of the State. (Inconformity with this policy, all assistance to non-vested schools was withdrawn in 1880. This provision occasioned considerable ill-feeling among Roman Catholics and some Anglicans.)

Primary education was to be free.

A Department of Public Instruction was established to administer the Act.

The colonial curriculum drew on reading, writing, and arithmetic (the ‘3Rs), with object lessons (‘show and tell’ lessons), drill and gymnastics, and vocal music were supposed to be taught, but in practice these relatively new subjects were often ignored or poorly taught. Geography, needlework, grammar, history and mechanics were also included in the curriculum at various levels. While some of these subjects were included for their practical usefulness, the main criterion for inclusion of subjects in the curriculum was not their practical value, but their value in disciplining (‘sharpening’) mental faculties such as ‘memory’ and ‘reasoning’.

By 1905, when important syllabus changes were made, the value of subjects was increasingly assessed in terms of their everyday usefulness, and ‘learning by doing’ was stressed. The child rather than the teacher, was becoming the centre of the learning process, at least in theory. These changes in the philosophy of education, combined with attempts to mould the content and methods of teaching to the peculiar geographic conditions of Queensland, were major influences on education for the next six decades.

Geographic Description 1: Inside The Green Belt

Geographic Description 2: Brisbane River

Geographic Description 3: Flood Plains; Flood Gullies; Hills

Citations

Department of Enviroment & Heritage Protection, Qld Heritage Register citation No.650025; Entry extracted from Queensland Department of Education document, Primary Education, undated.

Image Citations