The Headmaster: Frederick Charles Faulkner's Story

Frederick Charles Faulkner (1852 - 1924) was the longest serving Headmaster at the Perth High School (the present-day Hale School) from (1890-1914). Arriving to take up the Headmastership as a bachelor, he married into one of Perth's most prominent families and then proceeded to revolutionise secondary education in Western Australia.

Working in ramshackle buildings, that were barely fit for purpose, he developed the curriculum, set a high standard for university entrance qualifications and produced four Rhodes scholars in his time at the school. He also pursued a policy for his boys of a 'healthy mind in a healthy body' and fostered all sports, gymnasium activities, calisthenics and physical education. He always maintained his greatest achievement was developing the 'tone' of the High School boy. It is his enduring legacy.

Along the way he won lasting friendships with some of the notable educators and political figures of the day and lost many fine boys on the battlefields of South Africa, Gallipoli and in Europe.

For twenty-four years, he battled prejudice, litigation, a serious health crisis and tragic personal loss, but endured; setting up the Public Schools' Association and leading it, as President, for a decade, from its inception, in 1905 until his retirement. The denouement of his life was not what he had hoped for or envisaged.