Film and Television Institute

The Fremantle School building, known for a long time as the Film and Television Institute is a heritage-listed building located at 92 Adelaide Street, Fremantle.

It was also known as the Perth Institute of Film and Television. It was originally the Fremantle School, opened in 1854, and later the Fremantle Boys' School. The building was designed by William Sanford in the Victorian Tudor Style constructed using convict labour the walls are limestone the roof has Dutch gables with shingle covering. Additions were carried out in 1910 by the Public Works Department. The building was placed on the Register of National Estate in March 1972, was given an interim listing on the State register in 1992. It was given permanent listing on the State register as part of the Princess May Reserve in 2001.

In 1833, schools assisted by the Government were opened in Perth and Fremantle. These schools were called the Colonial Schools and they were open to all denominations of Christians. The Colonial Schools were designed to be for all children in the colony to use and to that end the cost of instruction was small, although the children had to provide their own slates and books. By 1850, the Education Board was discussing the problem of the non-suitability of rooms in use for the school at Fremantle and inquiring whether the Board could make arrangements for hiring or building a room giving better accommodation. The school accommodation proved so poor that the school was closed down in 1851.

By February 1852, the Resident Magistrate of Fremantle wrote to the Colonial Secretary on the subject of re-establishing the school. It is believed that the school was then moved to the Fremantle Mission House while preparations were under way for the new school. A letter sent by Mr Wright, the Master at the Colonial School in Fremantle in November 1852, demonstrated the great need for a new school building. Not only did he have to teach seventy-eight children by himself, with the possibility of the number being increased to 100 with the admittance of twenty-two pensioners' children, but the accommodation was very inadequate and that the '...erection of a school house at Fremantle is a positive necessity'. Tenders for building a school room at Fremantle were first printed in 1850 and the tenders for the carpenters' and joiners' work and the masonry (certain portions to be executed in limestone) as well as the tenders for quarrying the stone and performing the stone cutting for the dressings to the doors and windows were printed in March and October 1853. In 1852, the Legislative Council had voted 600 pounds for the new school in Fremantle.

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