11/08/2026
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝟏𝟖𝟓𝟎𝐬
If you had a forebear who was a teacher at a school in country New South Wales during the 1850s spare a thought for them and what they endured to try and educate their pupils. An extract from Commissions appointed to enquire into the State of Education throughout the Colony, Roman Catholic Schools (AONSW 4/3293 9 Part of File 55/10326) dated 1 October 1855 gives details of eighteen schools outside of the metropolitan area starting with Campbelltown and ending with Brisbane and Ipswich. At that time Queensland was still part of New South Wales and remained so until 1859.
Schools of interest to this area are the reports of Goulburn, Collector, Queanbeyan, Bungendore and Yass. The reports are brief – from one line to about 150 words with no mention of the number of students at each school. Overall, they could not be called glowing reports with the conditions borne by teachers and their pupils as far from ideal. Classes were held in a variety of locations - churches, chapels, finished and unfinished slab, stone, brick and weatherboard buildings. The shortage of closets (toilets) made sanitary conditions totally inadequate, and the lack of furniture, books and equipment added to the difficulties.
Bungendore had no desks; the only furniture consisted of a few forms that the children sat on. Appin had a schoolroom that had been taken over by the clergyman and classes were moved to a small building that had been converted into a stable. But spare a thought for the Queanbeyan teacher where his bedroom also served as school and storeroom and the Bungonia master who had to use the schoolroom as his kitchen as he had only one room to accommodate himself, his wife and two children.
Assessments of the school masters range from ‘very intelligent and efficient’ to ‘incompetent’. Collector school had a female teacher described as ‘intelligent and under better circumstances would be efficient’ and it was noted that her pay was ‘inadequate to maintain her respectability’. This last comment is to be wondered at. Was her standard of clothing and perhaps her accommodation limited by her inadequate salary? This woman worked under trying conditions in an unfinished stone building intended for a church, with no closets, furniture, apparatus and ‘books were much wanted’.
Closer to home the Yass school had the following report:
“The school is held in a remarkably good building. There is but one closet for both sexes. The furniture is bad in quality and insufficient in quantity and the apparatus scanty. The supply of books is small and composed of various kinds.
The children read and spell indifferently and do not comprehend the subjects of their lessons. The writing is bad. In Arithmetic, very little progress has been made; Geography is not taught; and only one child is learning Grammar. Their knowledge of the Catechism is very slight. The children are irregular and unpunctual, dirty and disorderly.
The master is old and nearly blind; of course he cannot under these circumstances be efficient.”
Standards of accommodation, teaching staff and education at Mount Carmel in 2026 have come a very long way from what seemed to be the average conditions of the 1850s.
Cheryl Mongan
📷 Dean O'Keeffe and school pupils c1880 outside the old St Augustine’s school in Yass. Source: ‘Memories of Yass Mission St. Augustine’s Parish Yass, NSW’ by Rev. Brian Maher
