FAIRBRIDGE SCHOOL.

Wairarapa Age, 25 July 1936, Page 5

FAIRBRIDGE SCHOOL.

TO BE ESTABLISHED SHORTLY IN NEW SOUTH WALES. GOVERNMENTS CO-OPERATING. SYDNEY, July 24. A Fairbridge farm school will shortly be established in New South Waled, probably in the western district. There will be 56 English boys in the initial draft for the farm, but later the scope of the scheme wiU be enlarged. The British, the Commonwealth, and the New South Wales Governments have guaranteed to meet the principal part of the cost of maintaining the boys at the school, and in addition the British Government has promised £15,000 towards the costs of establishment, provided a similar amount is raised in Australia. Already £13,000 has been received in contributions. (The Fairbridge Farm School scheme is the outcome of the idea of Kingsley Fairbridge, one of the few Rhodes Scholars who knew Cecil Rhodes. Fairbridge saw the London slums and was moved to found the Child Migration Society whieh selected Western Australia for its experimental farm and established an institution at Pinjarra in that State. Australia was considered to offer the best chances of success and a beginning was made a quarter of a century ago. Fairbridge is now dead, and he is buried in what has become a garden village. The children are chosen young, and until they are fourteen they do not undergo any course of training. When they turn that age they are taught everything they would learn at an agricultural college plus other useful arts, such as building in wood, brick, and concrete. The girls learn to milk, grow vegetables, cook, and launder. When the trainees have completed their course, at sixteen or seventeen years of age, they are much sought after by employers. In 1034 the King (then Prince of Wales) appealed for £lOO.OOO to start a similar scheme in and early this year a move was made to extend the system to New South Wales).