David Malouf

And the more intelligent they were, the more likely they were to leave school rather than go on.

But they left school absolutely numerate and absolutely literate.

Not only did they have a grasp of syntax that allowed them to sort of

read as well as write a proper complex sentence.

But they had been introduced to pretty well the whole of English poetry, a lot of Australian writing, all sorts of interesting speeches and essays, Emerson's essays, the Gettysburg Address, all of those things.

It was part of the policy of

of education in Queensland in those days that you had to provide a 13-year-old kid with enough grasp of the language and its literature and of ideas to enable them

to build an utterly literate life for themselves.

So this was how education in Queensland was right up until the 1960s.

Later.

Later indeed.

1974.

1970s, I beg your pardon.

1974.

Children would receive this intense education, this very intense education.

And at the end of primary school, at 13, nearly all of them would get out of the school system.

What kind of secondary education was there for kids?

The secondary education was mostly provided not by the state, but by other sources, the churches, but also by merchant groups.

And that had been a policy that they'd accepted from the beginning, that the state government would put all its resources into primary school education.

Absolutely superb teaching, absolutely fantastic buildings and facilities.