Thanks to Susanne Wyndham (Tate) – Class of 1958, who made contact with me after the 50th Anniversary Celebration last year and offered a copy of her recollections of the early days of Moorefield, some of which I have reproduced below. I was also able to scan some of her photographs that can be viewed by clicking the Flickr widget on the right side of this blog.
“I grew up in Hurstville and attended Hurstville Primary School. In the early post World War II years, the schools were building up in numbers and new secondary schools had to be built. Until the early 1950s, some girls would go to St George Girls High, a selective school, where they studied two languages. Next was Sutherland Intermediate High (eventually moved to Port Hacking High School) which went to Third Year and students did a language and home science. At Hurstville Home Science School (eventually moved to Penshurst Girls High School) the girls could do commercial subjects (typing and bookkeeping) and home science”.
Until 1910, secondary education was officially sub-divided into a variety of types of courses and schools, with the high schools offering an academic course to a selected intake of pupils, but from the 1920s the distinction between the various schools grew increasingly blurred.
Junior high schools (1930-1976) were separate secondary schools that emerged in 1930 offering junior secondary education only in areas such as home science or junior technical courses. The long-term trend was towards comprehensive high schools and by the 1950s many of the other types of secondary schools were either being transformed into or closing in favour of comprehensive high schools which offered languages and commercial subjects.
ØGovernment schools of New South Wales, 1848-2003, [Sydney]: NSW DET, 2003.
“When I went to high school in 1954 the new Moorefield was not ready so I went to the new school at Jannali … 
in 1955 we were split and … those of us on the St George side of the Georges river were “housed” at Hurstville and were to be known as Hurstville Girls Junior High School … by second term in 1957 we joined First Year classes at the newly completed Moorefield Girls High School … In 1958, 19 girls were the first Leaving Certificate year … I was one.
Our parents had to set us up with three lots of uniforms. When at Jannali we wore their grey pinafore and white blouse. At Hurstville we had a navy box pleated uniform with white blouse. While at Hurstville our class helped set up the school colours, badge and motto which became those for Moorefield … The new school at Moorefield had a royal blue uniform. We always wore panama hats in summer and velour hats in winter, with gloves all year round.”
Any more information on setting up Moorefield’s colours, badge and motto? What building did Hurstville Girls Junior High School occupy? To assist in building this blog, please leave any comments you like at the end of this post.
What a thrill to receive an email recently from Kathleen Gampenov (nee Crabtree) with some new information on early school history quoted below:
Well, it certainly helped as there was no information in our school archives about which building at the Forest Road (Hurstville Public School) site was occupied by Hurstville Girls Junior High nor about the designers of our school badge.