The Little School that Was: a brief history of Gardiner Central School
- scraze
- 8 minutes ago
- 8 min read
Way back in the halcyon days of 1990 when Neighbours was appointment viewing and we were first introduced to the use of single letters in song titles like Nothing Compares 2 U and U Can’t Touch This, a little school on Kent Street in Glen Iris celebrated its 75th anniversary with a bush dance at the Malvern Town Hall.
Two years later, the school’s classrooms fell permanently quiet. Now it was not because bush dances were – as my son would say – cringe by then. Instead, the school became an early victim of the widespread education efficiency reforms begun by the Cain/Kirner Government and dialled up to eleven by Jeff Kennett.
Spewin’.
Like most things that die unexpectedly, a lot more is recorded about the circumstances of the demise of the school than about its 75 years of quiet teaching excellence.
This is the story of the school that was Gardiner Central School.
Gardiner Central School’s origins
The State Government established Gardiner State School in 1915 to educate the children living in the new Tooronga Estate. This was a State Government-sponsored housing development run by the Closer Settlement Board that began construction in 1911. It was specifically developed to build houses for working men and their families.
The story of how it came about is rather interesting but you'll have to wait until I finish writing my Glen Iris book to read about it.
Anyway - By 1912, the Closer Settlement Board predicted that 400 school-age children would reside in the Tooronga Estate within twelve months.
All the land around the Tooronga Estate then was privately owned but mostly undeveloped grassland and pasture. There were a few hilltop grand residences – the nearby old Belmont Estate house (pictured below), St Hilary up near Burke Road, Ranfurlie down near the station – but housing development was only just beginning before WWI temporarily halted it. It was so sparsely populated that it did not even have a designated suburb. The Postmaster-General zoned the estate in Malvern East, and it would not become part of Glen Iris until 1924.
That said, there were other schools in the area already. Rather unusually, public schools arrived before private schools in the east of Malvern area (the Catholics not until after WWI). Many residents living east of Malvern attended teeny tiny Glen Iris School across the creek and up the hill at Glen Iris Road. In the other direction, Malvern Central School, opened in 1875, was less than a kilometre the other direction. Both schools were small, severely overcrowded and unsanitary.
The Education Department excised two acres of land (being eight housing blocks) between Belmont and Osborne Avenue and quickly threw up a standard, red brick building with capacity for 450 students. It was named ‘Gardiner’ in recognition of Malvern’s previous name and the first British capitalist-settler in the area.
Gardiner School opened on 1 July 1915 with Mr W M Rowe as the first headmaster. A year later, it was as overcrowded as the two neighbouring schools.
However, this was also when the Education Department changed its designation from a ‘state’ school to a ‘central’ school. There’s not an explanation anywhere about why it decided to do this. I can speculate three reasons: 1) the school’s proximity to several private secondary schools (especially for girls); 2) the opening of Prahran Technical Arts School up High Street that same year; and 3) the lack of any public high schools in the area.
What were Central Schools?
A state school in 1915 taught Prep to Grade 6 like a primary school does now. Back then, they were predominantly the domain of the working class. After finishing Grade 6 aged around 12, a child could chose between entering the workforce or vocational training. This meant a life as a farm or manual labourer or factory worker (boys), or a domestic servant (girls). Only just emerging at this time were Junior Technical Schools offering vocational training for pre-apprenticeship training (boys) or domestic arts schools teaching girls cooking, needlework and home economics.
It is also worth remembering that private secondary schools ruled Melbourne’s eastern suburbs until long after World War II. The closest public high school (Caulfield High School) was not even that close and did not open until 1960. Slightly nearer was John Gardiner High School (now Auburn High School in Hawthorn East) but it did not open until 1974. There was nowhere nearby for a child of limited means to attend high school, even if they wanted to.
Attending a Central School offered working class kids an opportunity out of the life of their parents. Central schools taught Prep to Grade 6 with two extra years of schooling, Year 7 and 8. At the end of this, now aged 14, children could still join the workforce. However, for a particularly clever student, the two additional years of schooling made them eligible for entry to Melbourne’s two selective secondary schools, Melbourne High School (boys) and MacRobertson High School (girls). Or, with the help of a kindly teacher, a student could acquire a government scholarship to the array of nearby private secondary schools.
The scant opportunities for advancement created a highly competitive and hotly contested environment. Fortunately, the opening of Prahran Technical Arts School up the road provided a new pathway for all primary school students. Enrolment there offered students (i.e. boys) opportunities to learn architectural and mechanical drawing and design and specialised trade skills such as signwriting, carpentry and printing. It also provided for the emerging technical education needs of the new century.
Life at Gardiner Central School
Gardiner Central School suffered from the same financial challenges as every new school. The Education Department provided only a very cold building and salaries for a few teachers. It was up to the parents to raise money for all the extras that make for a pleasant school experience. Within two months, parents had created an improvement fund and hosted a ‘picture’ night to raise money for landscaping and supplies. Successive generations continued their fundraising efforts for decades.
One of the unique aspects of Gardiner Central was its proximity to the Malvern City Baths (later Harold Holt Swim Centre). This produced an extraordinary array of competent swimmers and lifesaving certificate holders. Gardiner’s swimmers went on to win the regional swimming competition seven years in a row; coming runner up to Malvern Grammar School in 1935.[1]
Jim Asher, a student during the late 1920s, who lived in Creswick Street off Malvern Road used to ride his pony to school every day. There were now 690 students enrolled there. “In the morning you met with about one dozen children going to the same school from the one street,” he said in 1993.
It was not a school attended by the children of wealthy parents. “I remember pupils coming to classes without shoes during the Depression,” Jim said.
“It was an active, thriving place… we didn’t have the expensive things needed now,” another former student Jim McAllester said. “There were very few textbooks.” Sometimes there were no class photographs because the school lacked the funds to pay the photographer.
Over time, Gardiner Central became legendary for its tradition of academic excellence. Grade 6 pupils from Glen Iris, Camberwell, Auburn and Caulfield competed for places in F Form (Year 7) because it offered them the best chance to get to secondary school.
With no local high school nearby, Gardiner became a major “feeder” school for the selective entry Melbourne High School and MacRobertson Girls’ High School. By 1954, an average of 70 boys and girls secured places there each year. This ended with the opening of Camberwell High School and the proposed Burwood High, much to the irritation of school parents.[2]
It is here I must note that some time after 1954, when the government finally began to build more public high schools, Melbourne and MacRob implemented caps of 3 per cent on the number of students who could attend from one school. This was introduced to prevent a ‘brain drain’ from the new high schools. I cannot pinpoint exactly when this happened but if you know, let me know in the comments. Naturally, this affected the number of Gardiner students able to attend the two schools.
Jim McAllester followed a common pathway for bright Gardiner students of modest means. He began his schooling at Camberwell State School, where he skipped several grades before securing entry to Gardiner in Year 7 (aged 10). He became dux at Gardiner at only 12. He then won a government scholarship for £12 and used it to complete his schooling at Scotch College. After studying science at the University of Melbourne and a stint in the Army, he won a Fulbright scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study chemical engineering.
Long since retired when he was interviewed in the early 1990s, Jim and eleven other former Gardiner students still met up for Christmas lunch.
Aside from the two Jims, Gardiner Central produced several distinguished graduates, including Canberra-based architect Bryan Dowling (1939-2004) and YWCA life member Mary Fox MBE.
In the 1970s, the Victorian Government began to phase out central schools, replacing them with technical and high schools. Gardiner maintained its Year 7 and 8 classes until 1987 and became “Gardiner Primary” in 1989. The Tooronga Estate, formerly occupied by houses on ¼ acre blocks, began to give way to apartments and units, changing the demographic of the school’s catchment zone. Enrolments began to drop.
For many parents, smaller class sizes suited them just fine. “The school has all the advantages of a rural school in the heart of suburbia,” principal Cathy Dyson said in 1991.[3] But for other parents, the school’s well-established Greek population and its mix of children from other cultural backgrounds were a reason to stay away. “I’m staggered that having so many children from different backgrounds is not considered an advantage by some people,” Dyson said. “Kids here accept each other totally and I think that makes this school a true reflection of our multicultural society.”
The beginning of the end for Gardiner
With women beginning to return to work, Gardiner’s long-running and enthusiastic Mother’s Club began to suffer from a lack of volunteers and engagement. Parent disengagement became a real problem for a small school reliant on their support. Although the school maintained a reputation for academic excellence, the writing was on the wall for Gardiner Primary as soon as Jeff Kennett won the 1990 state election.
School closures actually began during the preceding Cain/Kirner Government. It sought to create educational equality (they said) by merging technical schools with high schools. Kennett swiftly escalated the process. According to the lost schools blog Learning from the Past,
“Both governments were looking for deep savings, and declining school enrolments made land sales an attractive target. A temporary lull in population growth meant that government schools were in a weak position, particularly in the older, inner suburbs.”
Gardiner Primary was one of the first to go. Although the school community fought to survive, it could not argue with declining enrolments. From its heyday of 690 students, by the time it closed, it had only 86 students enrolled.
In memorium of a school that was
The demolition of the school occurred swiftly, leaving behind a small, picturesque parkland popular with dog walkers and the elderly. The City of Malvern purchased a portion of the land in 1993 and created Gardiner Primary Reserve. The rest of the land was sold to MECWA, a non-profit aged care organisation formed in Malvern in 1959. They built a pleasant-looking facility they named after Noel Miller, a long-running former president of the group.
Today, over six hundred of the school’s alumni belong to its private Facebook page, a sure sign of affection for their childhood years spent there. After years in storage, Gardiner Central’s honour boards live on up the road at Malvern Central School’s Lloyd Street campus, where many of its former students migrated after the closure. The Stonnington History Centre retains a dossier on the school and the visitors book for the 75th anniversary shows that many of its alumni never moved far from where they spent their formative years in Glen Iris.
Schools come and go; but Gardiner Central School is most certainly not forgotten by everyone who attended.
REFERENCES
Thanks to Simone at the Stonnington History Centre for letting me see the Gardiner Central file
[1] "Gardiner Loses Linton Cup after 7 Years," Sun News-Pictorial, 28 March 1935.
[2] "Pupils Barred, Parents Cry," Argus, 10 August 1954.
[3] Biggs, Barbara, "Gardiner Now among the Prime Primaries," Malvern-Caulfield Progress, 5 November 1991.
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