Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/351

Rh of good government. The children are taught either wholly or partially by the aid of the State funds of each province, and in nearly all the colonies a separate department, under a minister of the Crown, controls the machinery of education.



"The leading principles of education in Australia are that it is free, or very nearly so. It is compulsory, and it is secular, though not in all cases, to the absolute exclusion of Bible-reading. The latest reports at hand show that there are 5844 State schools in Australia, with 553,191 pupils and 11,890 teachers. There are numerous high-schools, academies, and denominational schools in the cities and larger towns, and there are colleges and universities at Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide."