Key 87: Education [ii] 1950-1981 / Education Resource Centre 1970

The University’s role in teacher training was strengthened from 1950 when the State Government made available large numbers of scholarships to train teachers to meet the rising demand for secondary education at a time of rapid population growth. By 1967 the shortage of qualified science teachers had become so urgent that it precipitated a twenty year period of co-operation between the Science Faculty and the Secondary Teachers' College to provide a four year concurrent course, BSc(Ed), to ease the shortage.

A new building in the grounds of the Melbourne Teacher Training College completed in 1970 to cater for these students functions today as the Education Resource Centre. The Education Faculty moved into the new Redmond Barry Building in 1961.

A second chair was created in the Faculty in 1969 and a third in 1981. The Teacher Training College (Melbourne State College from 1973) was amalgamated with the University in 1989 as a consequence of the reforms to higher education instigated by John Dawkins.

The University also absorbed the Kindergarten Training College (Institute of Early Childhood Development, renamed the School of Early Childhood Studies) and more recently the Hawthorn Institute of Education in 1997 (now part of Melbourne University Private)