KENTUCKY PUBLIC SCHOOL

Kentucky Public School is a Rural Small School situated in the southern part of the New England Tablelands Region of New South Wales, twenty kilometres south west of Uralla.  Much of the surrounding farmland is devoted to sheep grazing.

It is a school that has a strong history of academic and environmental achievement and some students have recently embarked on a creative arts program producing many notable highlights.

The school was established in 1868 after a public meeting put forward their need for a school to the Council of Education (the forerunner of the current Department of Education and Training). Its initial enrolment was 25 students with the first teacher a Mr. Edward Pitman who had recently migrated from England.

In its early years, the school struggled. Many students did not attend regularly and were often kept home to help with farm work. Teachers’ salaries were as low as 36 pounds per annum as they were often paid in relation to the numbers of students attending. This resulted in the school being hard to staff.

The State Public Schools Act and the conversion of Kentucky School from a “Provisional” to a “Public” school in 1881 brought about change. The teacher’s salary increased to 123 pound per annum and enrolments increased to 50, although average attendance was still only about half of this.

In 1883 the school site was moved to its current site and a new school was built. Average attendance then crept up to almost thirty students.

Most teachers stayed from between one to three years; however Mr E.G.Burley, who began at the school in 1897, remained here until he died in 1925 after twenty-eight years service as its teacher. In 1932 the school gained a second teacher and enrolments have continued to remain strong to the present where the school has an enrolment of forty-six students.

Further upgrades of the school’s buildings have occurred over the years with the addition of fences, a pine forest, tennis courts and fixed playground equipment as well.

Kentucky Public School continues to provide the students of the local district with a high quality education as well as many other life experiences which supplement this learning.

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