The Education Department was established by the Education Act of 1885. The aim was to provide a free, compulsory, and secular education to children between the ages of seven and thirteen. In 1912, this was raised to 14. In 2013, the Department is responsible for primary and secondary education, library and information services, vocational education and training, children’s services, assessment and certification, and youth affairs. Children must now stay at school until they are 17.
The Education Department referred children for truancy, problems with behaviour, and apparent neglect to successive child welfare departments. Children in foster care, government run homes, and approved children’s homes attended Education Department schools. School records such as admission registers may contain information about former wards of state.
The Department ran Hagley Farm School which had boarding facilities and received child migrants in the late 1940s and early 1950s.