St Anthony's Centenary Book

Growth of the School
By 1926 enrolments had grown to 350
and on 11 th November additions to the
school were blessed and opened by
Archbishop Mannix. The alterations
included the addition of a second storey
with four classrooms as well as two
cloakrooms with a spacious stairway. The
additions cost £3400 and increased the
seating capacity of the school to 650. In
1958 the enrolment was 342 and the
enrolment in 2012 was 161 with many
ethnic groups represented including
students with Italian, Greek, Russian,
Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Indian
backgrounds.
Picture: School c1950
The physical layout of the classrooms
has changed dramatically over the years.
From the early years when classrooms
had a slates, chalk, pencils, a hand bell,
blackboard, ink wells, ink pens and desks
we now have an automatic bell,
interactive whiteboards, pens, computers
and tables and chairs.
For many years each classroom had a blackboard, and students would be
rostered as ‘duster monitors’ when they would take the dusters outside and
beat them with a ruler to remove the dust The dusters often became
‘weapons’ in the classroom and many a misbehaving student would be left
with a dust mark on their jumper after a teacher took aim. Those same
students may possibly have been responsible for refilling ink wells on the
desks or fulfilling the duties of bell monitor.
Picture: School bell
For the past decade blackboards have been slowly replaced by interactive whiteboards and
there has been a growing use of computers and other technological aids.