W. E. Kemp's school buildings 1880-96: ‘seed-germ of the Australian architecture of the future’?

The newly formed Parkes Government of 1878 inaugurated four years of stable government in New South Wales, during which a national system of free, compulsory and secular primary school education was introduced. Its Public Instruction Act of 1880 created a demand for new school buildings and the refurbishment of existing structures to house the ever-increasing number of students. The work of erecting schools, which in previous years had been carried out by George A. Mansfield under an arrangement with the Council of Education, was transferred to the Department of Public Instruction and William Edmund Kemp was placed in charge of the office of “Architect for Public Schools.”