Gerald Francis John Dart OBE (20 May 1905 – 17 August 1978) was a teacher, educational philosopher and playwright who was Headmaster of Ballarat Grammar School in Victoria, Australia from 1942 until 1970.
In 1949, the year debating was discontinued at Grammar, he wrote, “We do not consider it desirable to encourage boys to argue for causes in which they do not believe.” During the 1960s it was the school's policy to cap numbers at 450.
At the time of Dart's headmastership, Ballarat Grammar was a small Church of England boys’ school of up to two hundred or so students, at least half of them boarders from country towns and farms, especially in the Mallee, Wimmera and Western District regions of Victoria.
Dart produced the school's annual plays, choosing works by such writers as Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw and Christopher Fry.
He also wrote several plays, including My Last Duchess, based on Robert Browning, performed at Her Majesty's Theatre, Ballarat (1952); The Tower of Babel, produced for the Ballarat Begonia Festival (1959); and a parody of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll entitled The Summer of the 777th Billy-can, also performed at Her Majesty's (1960).