‘Perhaps the most important, and certainly the most exciting event in the whole history of education in Australia’: The 1937 New Education Fellowship Conference and New South Wales examination reform.

Abstract

Public external examinations were woven into the fabric of the education system of New South Wales (NSW) during the first three decades of the 20th century. By the late 1920s examination results had become the fetish and goal of most teachers and pupils in the state. In the early 1930s a reaction to this state of affairs developed; examination reform became a lively issue of debate. Central to the debate was the issue of the examination which marked the close of general adolescent education: the Intermediate Certificate (IC) examination. The agitation for IC modification began in the 1930s and did not cease until the 1960s. It began in the dissatisfaction of the 1930s, developed through the 1940s when opinion crystallized, survived the stagnation in educational reform of the late 1940s and early 1950s, quickly revived during the professional and public discussion surrounding the hearing and deliberations of the Committee Appointed to Survey Secondary Education in New South Wales (Wyndham Committee) and finally ceased with its abolition in the mid 1960s.

Citation

Godfrey, J. (2004), "‘Perhaps the most important, and certainly the most exciting event in the whole history of education in Australia’: The 1937 New Education Fellowship Conference and New South Wales examination reform.", History of Education Review, Vol. 33 No. 2, pp. 45-58. https://doi.org/10.1108/08198691200400009