The 150th anniversary of Victoria’s public education system is being celebrated this year to mark the anniversary of the Education Act 1872.

In honour of the 150-year anniversary, we look back on history of education on the island.

Phillip Island was opened up for settlement in 1868, and the Education Act was passed in 1872, the same year that the Cowes State School was officially opened.

In the four years that elapsed between settlement on Phillip Island and an official government school being established in Cowes, private schools were established, mainly small and private affairs, in homes across the island.

This period was a time when almost anyone could start a school and charge parents to teach their children, and these schools were established at the instigation of parents anxious for their children to receive an education.

The first of these was opened by a Mr J Cheyne, who established a small school in his hut on the beach at Rhyll prior later moving into a house in the Back Beach area.

A Miss Welch ran a private school near the corner of Settlement Road and Thompson Avenue on block number 8.

A Mrs Winnings had a school with some 30 pupils, near the Fiveways cross roads, set back from Coghlan Road, on block number 107. This was known as “Gillian’s School.”

Mr John Houston, a former successful businessman who had fallen on hard times, opened a school in the Church of England building in Cowes.

JW Gliddon, in his book “Phillip Island in Picture and Story” quoted RA McIlwraith, a son of early settlers the McIlwraiths of Heath Hill, who attended these schools for a while, as stating in 1943: “I attended for a time. Mr Houston, like Mr Cheyne, had not been trained as a teacher, and had comparatively little success in imparting knowledge.”

A school house was built at Newhaven during the 1880s.

It was run by a Mr Thompson and his wife who were highly educated people from England.

They had three daughters and a son.

The front partition was removed from the front room to accommodate 20 students.

The house was so small that the daughters had the daily task of converting their bedroom into a school room each morning, and rearranging it back into a bedroom each evening.

The son slept in the kitchen and the parents in the pantry. The school could not afford a clock, so a sun dial was made and the students taught to read it. On dull days, they had no idea of the time.

The school then moved to a house known as Fowlers opposite the Bight of that name. And later a cottage post office across the road from the original school house.

The present state school building was opened by Mr Frank Tate in 1920.

State government schools

Official state government schools began to be established on the island from 1872, when the Cowes school opened, due to the large number of children in the area … many of whom rode or walked up to seven miles to attend.

The opening of school so soon after settlement was necessary, as just seven families could count nearly 70 children. These included the offspring of S West (8), J West (8) Burtons (8) Gall (*) Morrison (10) Richardson (11) and Smith (13).

Island education

The Cowes government state school number 1282, started in 1872, four years after settlement.

It was located on the site of the current Cowes Cultural Centre, opposite the St Philips Church.

A gum tree was planted in the school yard to mark the occasion.

It was grown from a seed of the famous Hovell tree near the Murray River, that was marked by the famous explorers Hume and Hovell while on their journey of discovery in the year 1824.

The San Remo Primary School followed, opening on March 26th, 1874.

It was moved to its existing site in 1948.

The State School at Rhyll was opened in July 1891, with an enrolment of about 35 students. It was established in the Mechanics Hall, which was leased to the Education Department for use as a school.

Stan McFee senior, recalled how, when he started school there in 1894, “we had half time school at Rhyll and San Remo”.

Pupils attended at Rhyll until lunchtime on Wednesdays, and the remainder of the week at San Remo.

He went to San Remo with the teacher, on the ferry the Genesta, which ran across the bay from San Remo to Stony Point. Charles Grayden senior would row them back across the eastern passage, and his older brothers would pick him up at the Newhaven pier and take him home after school in a horse and jinker.

H E (Bert) Grayden also went to a half time school at Newhaven until third grade and remembered that the teachers would “whip the hide off you” for any mischief.

The government state school at Newhaven opened in 1892.

At Ventnor, prior to the government state school opening in 1923, school was held in the Ventnor hall from 1914 till 1923.

Before the hall was built, Ventnor children who were able to attend school, walked, or were driven to Cowes, in a dray, by a jolly singing German man.