Would UC exist without College and the Canterbury Collegiate Union? – Archivist Jane Teal
T hose familiar with the Scheme for the Establishment of a College in or near the capital city of the settlement of Canterbury, New Zealand, are aware that it proposed a Public School Department and a Collegiate or Upper Department. 1 The Public School Department became the Christ’s College Grammar School while the Upper Department gradually became College House. 2 The role of the Christ’s College Board of Governors in the creation of the Canterbury Collegiate Union, then Canterbury College and, ultimately, the University of Canterbury hinges on this early recognition that there was a need for students to expand their knowledge beyond secondary education. The Rev’d Henry Jacobs, the first Headmaster, wrote: “… after the establishment of the Somes Scholarships in 1858, the Somes Scholars were
always regarded by me as students of the Collegiate Department; they wore the academical cap and scholar’s gown, and worked with two or three in what was known as the Students class, being quite distinct from the Sixth Form of the Grammar School, although they necessarily sat in the same room.” 3 The progress towards national tertiary education was a complex process involving the University Endowment Act (1868) 4 and a push from the then established University of Otago to proceed on its own. There was much discussion about the establishment of physical locations of a university not like Oxford or Cambridge universities, with residential colleges, but like the University of London where there would be an over-arching governing body, and teaching would take place according to agreed standards in affiliated institutions. 5 The
1 The School List of Christ’s College 1850-1950 pp29–31 2 Both departments operated under the same Board of Governors until 1957, when a division of the original assets of land and scholarships occurred. 3 Jacobs, H. 1921 (revised 1950) Historical Notes. The School List of Christ’s College 1850–1950 pp35–36 4 An Act to Provide for the Endowment of a Colonial University 1868. http://www.nzlii.org/nz/legis/hist_act/uea186832v1868n65397/ 5 The Press 24 June 1871. The affiliated institutions were the Canterbury Collegiate Union, Nelson College, Wellington College, and Grammar School, Auckland College, and Grammar School. See Lyttelton Times 15 May 1873 and The Star 15 October 1872.
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