Schools/jchs.html
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Freotopia > schools > John Curtin High School/College of the Arts
JCCA
The former John Curtin Senior High School, built 1954-58, is on East Street between Ellen, Vale/Finnerty, and Ord Streets. The land that it's on was granted in 1879 to the people of Fremantle for a public park, but was requisitioned first by the Defence Department and then, opportunistically, by the Education Department, and so lost to the people. The school's playing field was formerly the Skinner Street Cemetery, and the remains of hundreds of people are still below the ground there.
Also, it was named for Australia's great war-time PM, and begun as a school in which the working-class youth of Fremantle could get a solid post-primary education with a technical (rather than academic) bias.
No longer a mere high school, it's now a selective 'College of the Arts'.
References and Links
Johnson, Tim 1992, Guns, Graves and Dreaming: the History of Fremantle's High School: John Curtin Senior High School, unpub.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 16 May, 2020 and hosted at freotopia.org/schools/jchs.html (it was last updated on 6 December, 2023). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.