Inauguration of the Sydney High Schools, 8 October 1883

Fifty four boys who passed the entrance exam for Sydney Boys’ High School enrolled on the first day of studies, 1 October 1883, in Castlereagh Street, in a venerable building previously occupied for many years by the St James’ denominational school.

A week after work commenced in the Boys’ School, on 8 October 1883, the Sydney High Schools were inaugurated in a ceremony conducted on the ground floor of the Castlereagh Street school building. The Minister for Public Instruction at the time was George Houston Reid, later a Prime Minister of Australia.

The press reported that Reid delivered a brief speech in which he noted that when he took office:

believing that high schools would be a most valuable link uniting the lower and higher system of public instruction he was determined to bring them into operation without delay.

However, Reid yielded pride of place on the occasion to a great scholar, the Rev Professor Charles Badham (1813-1884).  Badham was Professor of Classics at the University of Sydney, the finest textual critic of his generation and friend of the writer William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), the biologist Thomas Huxley (1825-1895), and of the great English theologians John Henry Newman (1801-1890) and Frederick Maurice (1805-1872).

It was appropriate that Professor Badham was given the honour of addressing the gathering for he, more than anyone, was responsible for the movement that had brought them there that day. For many  years he had urged the creation of an effective high school system to link the elementary public schools with the University of Sydney.

The speech, the last oration that Professor Badham delivered before he died in January 1884, was a masterpiece of oratory and covered some of the themes that might arise in relation to the provision of a “liberal” education to children of the emerging middle classes.