VPRS 9684 School Inspector's Notebooks (G.W.Brown)

Full description

This series comprises notebooks of Schools Inspector Gilbert Wilson Brown. Gilbert Wilson Brown became Organising Master and Sub-Inspector of National Schools in March 1858. In 1862 G.W. Brown was appointed as an Inspector of Schools with the Board of Education. He was subsequently appointed as the first Inspector-General of the Education Department which succeeded the Board of Education in 1873. In March 1878 he became Secretary of the Education Department.

The role of a schools inspector included: checking compliance with the Boards regulations, viewing the teaching methods, examining the children to ascertain the efficiency of instruction, checking the school records, investigating the condition of the buildings and furniture, holding discussions with the local teacher and patrons and submitting a report on the school to the Board.

The notebooks date from 1860 to 1870 and include the names of the students attending the schools which were visited and sometimes include comments about family and local circumstances. G.W. Brown was not the only inspector of schools so the notebooks will only relate to schools within his inspectorates.

Vision and Realisation: A Centenary History of State Education in Victoria by L.J. Blake, published in 1973, refers to the notebooks of Gilbert Wilson Brown as having been fortuitously recovered by C.A. Housden, Education Department Libraries Service Officer 1951-1968.