page_title: Bundaberg Central State School
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Bundaberg Central State School / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Central State School Boys, Bundaberg. (Bundaberg Central Boys State School, on Crofton Street, amalgamated with Bundaberg Central Girls and Infants State School on 15 Jan 1926 and was renamed Bundaberg Central State School.)
context_page_description: Bundaberg Central State School is a heritage-listed state school at 13 Crofton Street, Bundaberg Central, Bundaberg, Bundaberg Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Robert and John Ferguson and the Queensland Department of Public Works and built in 1890 by William Calvert. It is also known as Bundaberg South State School. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 28 November 2014.
context_section_description: The school now known as Bundaberg Central State School was established, as Bundaberg South State School in January 1875, on a site in Bourbong Street, transferring to its current site at Crofton Street in July 1890. The original school building on the Crofton Street site was completed in 1890 to a standard design by architects Robert and John Ferguson. As the town and pupil numbers grew, the school expanded, with two playsheds (1900, 1907) and landscape elements such as mature trees and a forestry plot of hoop pine trees (ca.1955). The school has been a focus for the local community as a place of important social and cultural activity for more than a century.
  Traditionally the land of the Kalki people, European settlement of the Burnett area began with pastoral settlement in the 1840s and 1850s. Timber cutters arrived in the mid-1860s. Selection of land around Bundaberg started in 1867 under the "Sugar and Coffee Regulations" of the Crown Lands Alienation Act 1860, which aimed to promote agriculture and closer settlement. The site of Bundaberg was officially surveyed in 1869. The town's development as a port and service centre was boosted by growing coastal traffic and by its designation as the port for Mount Perry's copper mining from 1881. Surrounded by sugar plantations and the site of two sugar refineries, Bundaberg became an important sugar town as the sugar industry boomed from the 1880s.
  In 1871 a school reserve was created on the site of Bundaberg's present day Buss Park, Christ Church Anglican Church and the Civic Centre in the centre of town. The local community raised the required finance for the first buildings of Bundaberg South State School, which were completed by January 1875. The average attendance was 123 pupils in July 1875.
  The provision of state-administered education was important to the colonial governments of Australia. National schools were established in 1848 in New South Wales and continued in Queensland following the colony's creation in 1859. After the introduction of the Education Act 1860, Queensland's public schools grew from four in 1860 to 230 by 1875. The State Education Act 1875 provided for free, compulsory and secular primary education and the establishment of the Department of Public Instruction. This further standardised the provision of education, and despite difficulties, achieved the remarkable feat of bringing basic literacy to most Queensland children by 1900.
  The establishment of schools was considered an essential step in the development of early communities and integral to their success. Locals often donated land and labour for a school's construction and the school community contributed to maintenance and development. Schools became a community focus, a symbol of progress, and a source of pride, with enduring connections formed with past pupils, parents, and teachers. The inclusion of war memorials and community halls reinforced these connections and provided a focus/venue for a wide range of community events in schools across Queensland.
  In September 1883, separation of the school into a boys' school and a girls' and infants' school was approved by the Department of Public Instruction. Bundaberg South Boys' School opened in a new building on the site, while the Bundaberg South Girls' and Infants' School opened as a separate school in the existing school building.
  By the 1880s the school site had become valuable real estate, prompting the town council to repeatedly attempt to have the school moved. Finally, in 1889, the Minister for Public Instruction directed that the school transfer to a new site, two blocks to the south of the existing school, as it was in the interest of the public to have the old site for business purposes.
  Consequently, a new building for the Girls' and Infants' School was built by William Calvert for £2600 on the new site, which occupied a whole block bounded by Woondooma, Barolin, Crofton and Maryborough streets. The Boys' School and its building were moved to the new site and the new Girls' and Infants' School was completed by July 1890.
  Bundaberg
caption: Boys' school, circa 1890
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