Aramac State School is a heritage-listed state school at 69 Porter Street, Aramac, Barcaldine Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Francis Drummond Greville Stanley and built in 1880 by McMahon and Cowper. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 10 October 2014.
History
Aramac State School, originally established as Aramac Provisional School in 1878, is located in the rural town of Aramac, in central western Queensland. It is important as a school complex which includes significant pre-World War II buildings – a Stanley teaching building (1880), a teacher's residence (1919), a Sectional School (1928), and a domestic science building (1935).
William Landsborough and Nathaniel Buchanan explored the area around Aramac in 1859 and established pastoral leases in the district from 1862. The town of Aramac arose after John William Kingston erected a store in 1867, and later a hotel, beside Aramac Creek. The settlement was declared a town site in 1869 and surveyed in 1875. Thereafter, Aramac acted as a service town for the sparse but growing rural population of the district.
Schooling commenced at Aramac with a temporary provisional school conducted in a rented building, between January and December 1878, with an average attendance of 20 children. In August 1878, the Department of Public Instruction decided to establish a state school at Aramac. Contractors McMahon and Cowper commenced construction of the teaching building and separate teacher's residence on a site in 1879. After delays obtaining materials the school finally opened on 14 June 1880.
The provision of state-administered education was important to the colonial governments of Australia. In 1848 the New South Wales Government established National Schools. This was continued by the Queensland Government after the colony's creation in 1859. The Education Act 1860 established the Queensland Board of General Education and began to standardise curriculum, teacher training, and facilities. The State Education Act 1875 provided for the further key initiatives of free, compulsory and secular primary education and established the Department of Public Instruction to administer the Act. This move standardised the provision of education and, despite difficulties, colonial educators achieved a remarkable feat in 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 major community focus for social interaction, 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 halls used for community purposes reinforced these connections together with fetes, markets, public holiday celebrations, school break-up days, fundraisers, polling days, sporting events, reunions, and dances, all held within the schools' buildings and grounds.
From the 1860s until the 1960s, Queensland school buildings were predominantly timber framed, taking advantage of the material's abundance in the state and the high number of builders skilled in its use. This also allowed for easy and economical construction and enabled the government to provide facilities in remote areas. Due to the standardisation of facilities, schools across the state were developed in distinctly similar ways and became complexes of typical components. These components included: teaching building/s, school yard, sports oval, head teacher's residence, and a variety of landscape elements such as sporting facilities or play equipment, playsheds, gardens and trees.
The new Aramac state school comprised a timber school room and separate residence, built to a standard design by Queensland Colonial Architect Francis Drummond Greville (FDG) Stanley, who was then responsible for all government school designs. During his prolific career he was also responsible for many important government and private buildings. For his schools, Stanley became the first to develop standard designs and produce "classes" of buildings that would later evolve into "types". The vast majority of subsequent school buildings in Queensland were built from standard "type" designs.