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.
Stanley's school designs remedied the weatherproofing problem of preceding single-skin school designs by cladding the exterior with chamferboards or weatherboards as well as providing an interior lining. Other distinguishing Stanley design characteristics were: classroom width; the location, size and detailing of windows and central stairs to the verandah aligned with the central entrance door. These were employed throughout the colony as the first deliberately "standard" plans. Although many Stanley school buildings were constructed, few remain and extant examples are rare. Known examples survive at the former Carbrook State School, Tallegalla State School, former Hemmant State School, Kalkie State School and Petrie State School.
The Stanley teaching building and residence were both lowset timber-framed buildings on stumps with gable roofs and verandahs, front and back. The school room, with two three-tiered galleries measured with an high coved ceiling and a tie beam above the floor. Three narrow windows were housed in each gable end with a door and four pairs of windows to each side elevation. The residence contained two rooms separated by a hall. Its gable ends were clad in corrugated iron and its weatherboard front wall contained a large double-hung window, either side of the front door.
Under the stewardship of the Department of Public Works which retained responsibility for schools until 2013, and through the involvement of some of Queensland's most innovative architects, school buildings became more advanced and diverse. This was the outcome of years of systematic reform and experimentation.
Achieving an ideal or even adequate level of natural light in classrooms, without glare, was of critical importance to educators. After 1900 the virtues of maximum natural ventilation and controlled, high-levels of natural light in teaching buildings were extolled and became a primary determinant of the design concept and layout of all school buildings. Architects experimented with different combinations of roof, ceiling and wall vents, larger windows, dormer windows and ducting. Roof ventilators became fleches which grew larger as the experimentation continued.
In highset timber buildings were introduced, providing better ventilation as well as further teaching space and a covered play space underneath. Windows were rearranged and enlarged to provide a greater amount of gentle, southern light into the room. Desks were rearranged so that the light would fall onto students' left-hand sides to avoid throwing shadows onto the pages; this presupposed that all students would be right-handed. The change in philosophy often meant a complete transformation of the fenestration of existing buildings. Interiors became lighter and airier and met with immediate approval from educators. This was a noticeable new direction and the better lit and ventilated form became a characteristic of Queensland schools.
As a service town to its pastoral district, Aramac was subject to the same vicissitudes as those it served. During the 1890s it suffered the economic consequences of depression, drought, insecure markets, low wool and meat prices and the spread of cattle tick. The town's population fell from 398 in 1881, to 389 in 1891, then 361 in 1901. Aramac did however gain more reliable and rapid transportation via the Central Western Railway line opened in 1886, and a reliable water supply from the establishment of artesian bores.
Even though the population was in decline, the introduction of compulsory school attendance saw the Aramac State School enlarged in 1900. The Stanley teaching building was extended by and included a lavatory and hat room on the southern corner of the rear verandah to a standard design by the Department of Public Works. The southern gable end wall was relocated to form the gable end of the new extension and the new interior walls were unlined. Two new windows were added to the east and west elevations and a fleche to the roof. In 1916, interior walls were lined, the building painted and fly screens were installed on the verandahs and boxed out over the windows.
In Australia, only Queensland offered free accommodation to teachers, the government policy applying to male teachers (only) from as early as 1864. This was partial recompense for low wages; an incentive for teacher recruitment in rural areas and provided onsite caretakers. Refinement of the standard residence design occurred over time, with each modification responding to teacher complaints and Teachers' Union agitation. Following World War I, teacher shortages were blamed on the inadequacy and shortage of teachers' residences. Consequently, many new teacher residences were constructed across Queensland in the 1930s and again following World War II.
From the outset, teachers' residences were built to standards regulated by the Board of General Education rather than to specific designs which varied according to architects responsible. Initially, residences were most often attached as annexes to the classroom building, but from the 1880s were built as detached residences. These residences were very similar in design to the vernacular Queensland house with few, if any, education-specific requirements or features.
Residences designed by the Department of Public Works' architects, and constructed to the high standard demanded by the state, were typically of a higher-quality in design, materials and construction than most similarly scaled private residences. The detached teacher's residence was located within the school grounds at a distance from the teaching buildings, usually with a separate, fenced yard with gardens and trees. The designs ranged from one to four bedrooms and evolved simultaneously with the teaching buildings to keep up with modern needs and styles.
In 1919 a new teacher's residence was constructed at Aramac. Plans for the new teacher's residence show a highset, timber residence with a core of four rooms under a hipped roof, and wide verandahs to three sides under a lower pitched roof, with a dining area, kitchen and bathroom on the rear verandah. The external walls were clad in weatherboards and the internal frame was single skin, lined with v-jointed tongue-and-groove boards. Joinery included double hung windows without hoods.
During the 1920s and 1930s alterations were made to the vast majority of older school buildings to upgrade their lighting and ventilation. In 1921, the fenestration at Aramac State School was altered for improved lighting and ventilation. New 18-light windows (three pairs of casements with fanlights over) replaced the gable end windows with sunshades and flyscreens retained. The gauze to the verandahs was removed to railing height and replaced with tongue-and-groove hardwood boards. In addition, the school was raised on stumps and concrete paving laid to provide additional shaded play space beneath in 1922. Part of the understorey area was enclosed in 1923 to create a domestic science room.