Church Schools and Private Schools

The Bishop's School at Nelson closed down in 1855, but at Motueka where there was no N.S.S. school the Anglican day school which had both Maori and Pakeha pupils carried on until the Central Board of Education took over. The Wesleyan day school in Nelson which was attended as 50 scholars in 1854 closed down when it was clear that the Provincial Council would take responsibility for education.

In 1856 the two Roman Catholic St Mary's Schools in Nelson were attended by as many as 166 children of whom more than half were non-Catholics. A small Catholic school had been started in 1858 by a Miss O'Dowd, and after the advent of Father Antoine Garin in 1850 the number of children attending the Catholic schools had steadily increased, although there were then only some 230 Catholics in the local population. Father Garin was a competent teacher himself and had engaged another efficient teacher in the person of C. A. Richards. Father Garin was moreover a zealous promoter of education. Such a remarkable growth in the attendance of non-Catholics at the St. Mary's schools is a reflection upon the quality of the education offered in the Nelson School Society's schools in Nelson. In 1853 a Quaker traveller remarked on the superior standard of elementary education provided by Catholic schools both in Wellington and Nelson. Father Garin was scholarly and well trained in the arts of instruction and must have made a good impression on parents in comparison with the succession of teachers of limited educational attainments employed in Nelson by the School Society, e.g. Jabez Parker the former baker.

One feature of early educational development was the failure of private venture elementary schools such as those that appeared in contemporary Wellington and Auckland. No equivalent of Old Mother Buxton's school in Wellington or Mr Gorrie's Academy in Auckland survived. A Miss Hilton, a governess, conducted a small school for girls and small boys for a short period in 1844–5. A surveyor, Alexander Ogg, a man with progressive ideas about education and industrial training, opened a private school at Hope in 1852, but by 1853 he had abandoned the project and the school was taken over by the Nelson School Society. A Mr Hawke was running his Woodland House Academy in Nelson from 1853 to 1855 but by the middle of that year he gave up and took a position in the Society's Nelson school. It seems that in the economic climate of the Nelson province elementary schools could survive only with community or church support.