This volume represents the first major effort to write an overview of the history of education in the South West Pacific. The region contains countries as disparate as Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Samoa, but there are connections between the histories of schooling in these nations. Most of the school systems, institutions and educational practices discussed in this volume arose as a result of mainly European or 'western' economic, missionary and imperial activity in this part of the Pacific world. However, indigenous peoples also educated their communities before and after the introduction and adaptation of western forms of schooling. This volume demonstrates the diverse educational experiences and histories of the countries of Oceania.

In the half-century after 1913, approximately 5000 children were sent from Britain to Australia, Canada, and Rhodesia under the auspices of the Child Emigration Society, established by the South-African born Kingsley Fairbridge in 1909. The Fairbridge Society's child emigration scheme became the best known and most celebrated of the 20th-century juvenile migration schemes from Britain to the Imperial Dominions. This study investigates the motives for the establishment of the Fairbridge child migration scheme, examines its history in Australia and Canada, and outlines the experiences of many of the former child migrants. The book is based on material from Australia and Canada as well as archives of the Fairbridge Society in England, Western Australia and New South Wales, plus surviving records of the Society in British Columbia, and on interviews with former Fairbridge children. It aims to place the Fairbridge scheme in its historical context, and uses oral history, interviews and photographs.