CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · History & Society

Canterbury Boys' High School

school in Sydney, Australia

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 14, 2026
Entity authorityQ5033622 ↗
Source-derived summary

Canterbury Boys' High School (CBHS) is a public secondary day school for boys located in Canterbury, a south-western suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is near the Canterbury Park Racecourse and about 200 metres north of Canterbury Girls' High School.

Established in January 1918 as the Canterbury Intermediate High School, Canterbury Boys' High School is part of the St. George Region of high schools, and currently enrols around 470 students from Years 7 to 12. Almost 90 per cent of the students at Canterbury Boys come from a non-English-speaking background.

History

Canterbury Boys' High School traces its origins back to 1917, when a deputation from the local Primary School's Parent and Citizens Association asked the Minister for Education to open a high school in the district. There was a concern that the demand for places in local High Schools would exceed available places, and as a result of this request, the Department decided to establish the school at Canterbury.

The school was opened in January 1918, in what is now the Primary School buildings, and began operating with two classes and 72 students, with Ernest John Rourke B.A. as Headmaster. The school was initially an intermediate high school (1st to 3rd year), and was therefore named Canterbury Intermediate High School. At its foundation, the search had already begun for a more appropriate site for the new school.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Canterbury Boys' High School” is school in Sydney, Australia. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Canterbury, Boys' and High, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1918, 1917—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1918-01-01. For this dossier, Canterbury, Boys' and High is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “school in Sydney, Australia” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5033622. Authority coordinates are -33.904, 151.124. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1918 and 1917.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Canterbury Boys' High School”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Canterbury Boys' High School primary sources, Canterbury Boys' High School archive and Canterbury research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Canterbury Boys' High School”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Canterbury Boys' High School” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.