20 March 2025, 4 pm on Zoom (link to be sent closer to the date. Contact Christine Jennett if you wish to attend:cjennett@ozemail.com.au.

 

Abstract

What began as an exercise to ‘give back’ to the community, to use my skills as a trained historian and professional writer in 2024 to offer to write a history of my girls’ high school, ended up taking a different direction. Unfortunately, because the imminent merger of Randwick Girls’ High School with its boys’ counterpart was highly contentious (especially on the girls’ side), a history – to those steering the merger – was undesirable to say the least.

 I decided instead to examine the phenomenon of domestic or home science schools which prevailed from the 1920s in NSW until abolished by the Wyndham Scheme 40 years later.  Domestic or home science schools that offered two to three years of secondary schooling were designed to turn out girls trained for domestic service and for their ‘natural destiny’ – as wives and mothers. Subjects included the usual cooking and sewing and  some commercial electives (typing).  Such schools provided three years of post-primary schooling with no opportunity for further education or matriculation. 

What I have found is that while the ‘domestic ideology’ was publicly strong, girls given the choice of commercial subjects chose them overwhelmingly.  An outraged commentator in the NSW Teachers’ Federation journal asked in 1937: 

Why describe as domestic science schools those educational establishments which apparently cater for commercial subjects? 1

Noeline Kyle in her otherwise excellent Her Natural Destiny. The Education of Women in New South Wales, focuses on the ideology but does not drill down into the numbers of students taking the commercial options. Girls were circumventing the domestic typecasting and ‘voting with their feet’. They wanted jobs in retail industries, business and commerce. Domestic science schools lingered into the 1950s but their ultimate demise was of course aided by changes in employment, the increasing wealth and sophistication of the NSW (and Australian) economy following the Second World War and the realisation, at both the Commonwealth and State level, that the nation’s secondary education was underfunded and no longer fit for purpose. The reforms devised and implemented by Harold Wyndham, who ‘deplored the wastage of female talent’ in Australia, finally levelled the playing field for students but especially for girls. Many were quick to seize the opportunities presented and many were able to complete their secondary education and pursue rewarding and lengthy careers.

 

 

About the speaker:

 

Dr Deborah Campbell, who has a doctorate in history from the University of New South Wales, spent over four years on the staff of the Deputy Premier of New South Wales as a policy adviser in the areas of Health and Transport in the 1980s. Following a varied and successful career of over 23 years working for the NSW Government as a policy adviser, manager and senior executive, Deborah became a partner in the establishment of Campbell Macpherson Pty Ltd as a boutique consultancy which provided services to . support the legislative and policy process, including major legislative projects, statute law revision, regulatory impact statements, ministerial reports, cabinet submissions and briefing papers as well as undertaking management reviews and developing policy discussion papers. After 18 years she wound up the company and retired in 2023.