testing, planting and pruning. In 1917 Queensland's first rural school was established as an adjunct to the Nambour State School. With the success of the Nambour Rural School, the Department of Public Instruction decided to open three more rural schools in 1920, one of which was at Marburg. Consequently, a 10-acre (approximately ) lot in Louisa Street, about to the northwest of the first school site but close to the Marburg town centre with its railway station, was purchased from A Beutel for £250 on 30 August 1920 as the future site of the Marburg Rural School. This proximity to the railway station was important because "pupils aged between 12 and 14 years and ex-pupils to 17 years were eligible for free rail travel and free tuition at a Rural School one day per week". Pupils from Rosewood, Minden, Tallegalla, Lark Hill. Glamorgan Vale, Haigslea and Walloon were allotted a day for attendance at Marburg Rural School. Rural school classes were held in rented buildings in the Marburg Show grounds until 1922, when the former school buildings were transported to the new site and repurposed as vocational classrooms. The purpose of rural schools was to educate children to enable them to develop rural areas and to provide a means of extending country children's education beyond the compulsory years with an additional year of agricultural and domestic studies. Altogether 30 rural schools opened in Queensland between 1917 and 1939. Each was located in prime fruit-growing, dairying or agricultural areas and functioned "as a central school for the surrounding district schools, teaching domestic, commercial, agricultural and vocational classes". The new sectional school building at Marburg State School was built to a Department of Public Works (DPW) standard design (D/T1), with some modifications, for £2990 and was ready for use on 29 January 1922. A 1921 plan of the sectional school building shows it as a long, weatherboard-clad structure, highset on tall stumps, with a Dutch-gable roof and two circular roof vents. A teachers annexe was attached to the verandah on the northern side, and included one space for the head teacher and another for the assistant teachers. Stairs either side of the teachers' annexe provided access to the verandah, which was enclosed at the western end for hat and coat racks, and at the eastern end for use as a store room. Large banks of windows spanned the southern wall. The interior