Abstract
The story of Kingsley Fairbridge's life-work was told at a meeting ofthe Royal Society of Arts on February 1 by the Hon. Sir Hal Colebatch, Agent-General for Western Australia, who, as a member of the Western Australian Government, saved the original Fairbridge Farm School from collapse during the Great War by arranging for a State subsidy for it. It had at first been financed wholly from private subscriptions raised by the Child Emigration Society which Fairbridge formed in 1909 while an Oxford Rhodes scholar. The purpose of the scheme was, and is, to take from unpromising if not hopeless surroundings children of 7–12 years of age and give them a good general education with special training in all phases offarm and domestic activity, up to the age of sixteen years. Their subsequent careers are self-chosen. Many do not choose farm work, but their farm training is none the less valuable to them. The Farm School method involves: residence in a cottage home restricted to fourteen inmates (boys or girls) controlled by a carefully selected house-mother, training combined with teaching, provision for leisure time occupations, an elaborate 'after-care' system, including the banking of half of all earnings upto the age of twenty-one years. Judged by results, as represented by some 700 ex-pupils, all self-respecting self-supporting citizens, pulling their full weight in the community, the scheme has been an outstanding success. Similar schools have now been founded in Canada, Victoria and NewSouth Wales. By the end of next year, the four schools should be in fulloperation with an aggregate enrolment of nearly 1,200 and an annual intake and outflow of 250, the total cost per head being about £50 a year.
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The Fairbridge Farm Schools. Nature 141, 680 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141680c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141680c0