Australia’s school nursing program was born in Victoria

Australia’s school nursing program began in Victoria more than a century ago. With ANMF (Vic Branch) school nurse members recently taking protected industrial action for the first time this century, we look back at the history of this vital program.

Earliest days

The Victorian Board of Public Health surveyed child health at a suburban Melbourne primary school in 1905. It used the data to prove to the Department of Public Instruction (the precursor to today’s Department of Education) the need for a school health service. By 1909, the department had established the Victorian School Medical Service, staffed by three doctors. Despite its name, it only serviced Melbourne. Nurses officially joined the service in 1913, but the first Australian nurses in schools actually started a few years earlier, in the bush.

The bush nurse as school nurse

Through her marriage to the Governor General of Australia, Rachel Ward, Countess of Dudley, had found herself in Australia in 1908. Following her success with a similar initiative in Ireland, she advocated for and, by 1911, founded the Bush Nursing Association.

The first bush nurse, Sister Mary Thompson, was employed in Beech Forest, northeast of Apollo Bay. Funded by community donations, subscriptions and trusts (and, in part, £10,000 raised by Dame Nellie Melba during a benefit concert), within a couple of years there were multiple bush nursing centres around Victoria.

The Department of Public Instruction also agreed to provide some funds to the bush nurses, in return for which they were required to examine children in state schools.

In a November 1913 letter to UNA – the journal of ANMF (Vic Branch) predecessor the Royal Victorian Trained Nurses Association – Victorian Bush Nursing Association Superintendent Edith Greer provided an illuminating account of the work its nurses did.

‘The bush nurse is also the school nurse,’ she wrote. ‘It is part of her duty to visit each school in her district once a month, give a short teaching on hygiene, personal cleanliness, examine the children for any defects … and give lessons on first aid.’

While the Victorian School Medical Service eventually began sending its nursing staff to regional schools, and bush nurses were not officially part of the Service, by 1915 bush nurses were required to examine children in every state school in their district, and report to the Education Department on each child’s health.

In her superintendent’s report for that year, Edith noted that ‘Both the examination and teaching are done directly under the supervision of the medical officers of the Education Department’¹Published in UNA, March 1816, page 2.

Essentially, School Medical Service nurses and bush nurses both came under the aegis of the department.

Mid-century and organising

The School Medical Service transferred from the Education to the Health Department in 1944. By the late 1950s, nursing had become its own separate stream within the service, which continued to grow over the following decades.

“The bush nurse is also the school nurse.” – Edith Greer

As the service expanded into the regions, it began to take over more of the school nursing duties from bush nurses, with the aim of examining every Victorian ‘school child three times between 5 and 14 years’²The Age, 28 July 1950, page 5. It also became more and more reliant on nurses over doctors, which consequently extended the scope of what its nurses were expected to do. By the late 70s and early 80s, these nurses were starting to organise.

Royal Australian Nursing Federation³As ANMF was known in 1980s (RANF) school nurse members, for example, formalised position descriptions (outlining required tasks and salaries) where none had previously existed. They lobbied for reclassification and improved wages. Around 1981, they formed an unofficial coalition, called the ‘non-residential school-based registered nurses’ after the relevant award at the time.

‘The impetus,’ says early member Maureen Ward, ‘was to share experiences and mutual support, make known and develop the role, [and to provide] professional development and professional support.’ By 1987, this coalition had become an official RANF School/Campus Nurse Special Interest Group (SIG) ‘to improve communication and act as a lobby group for improving our pay, conditions and status as well as supporting each other in what can be a very lonely job.’⁴Pauline Scott, handwritten letter to colleagues to gauge interest in forming a school nurses SIG. 22 November 1985.

Exclusively a nursing service

By 1993, the School Medical Service had fully replaced bush nurses in regional areas. It no longer employed doctors, and had become officially known as the School Nursing Program – though it significantly reduced its nursing EFT⁵Glenda Perry, The Victorian School Nursing Program: a brief history, Victorian Government Library Service. 1995 figures show that 99 per cent of Victorian parents opted into School Nursing Program health assessments, and its benefits proved it to be ‘extremely cost effective’⁶ANF industrial officer Liz Cheligoy, On the Record, November 1997, page 7.

But towards the end of the decade, the program faced the axe under the Kennett Liberal Government. Writing in On the Record in November 1997, ANF⁷RANF dropped the ‘royal’ from its title in 1989. Industrial Officer Liz Cheligoy noted that the ‘State Government appears to be planning to abolish the school nursing program by the start of the 1998 school year.’

She explained that a departmental redevelopment committee – ‘which did not consult with parents, schools, school nurses, local government or maternal and child health nurses’ – had recommended the program be abolished, and the Minister for Family and Community Services, Denis Napthine, supported the recommendation.

In response to the recommendation, ANF and its school nurse members commenced a campaign to save the school nurse program. Intense lobbying, letter writing and community action eventually forced a backdown and by 1999 – with the change of government – not only had the School Nursing Programme been saved, it was expanded with the creation of the Secondary School Nursing Program in 2000.

During the early years of the 21st century, Maureen Ward and Gay Edgecombe, members of the ANF Victorian School Nurses SIG (as they were now called), developed professional standards of practice for primary school and for secondary school for nurses; these would eventually become Australia’s first national School Nursing Professional Standards for Practice.

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School nurses take protected industrial action

In April 2026, ANMF’s school nurse members made the difficult decision to commence protected industrial action as a last resort because, after almost a year of negotiations, the state government’s offer remained unacceptable – leaving school nurses earning up to 30 per cent less than equivalent public sector nurses working in hospitals. At time of publication, members continue their protected industrial action.

Members’ claims also include a commitment from the government to ensure the workloads of school nurses are safe and that the primary school nursing program is universally accessible to all Victorian families with children in their first year of school.

‘School nurses are not worth less than hospital nurses,’ said ANMF (Vic Branch) Secretary Maddy Harradence.