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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
Public high schools in Australia rose on the waves of economic expansion during the first and the second halves of the twentieth century. The earliest establishments, including the ill-fated few that were founded in New South Wales under the Public Instruction Act of 1880, shared some of the features of the American high school as established in Massachusetts in 1827. Open to all children who had successfully completed elementary school, they were intended to play a broad role by offering both vocational and academic or university-preparatory courses. But they were not free; they were administered by the state, rather than by a local authority; and there were very large regional differences in provision. Moreover, it was not long before they shed their “comprehensive” or multi-sided character and focused on academic training.
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