[3] In pursuance of these "minutes" he was summoned with others to the first Government examination of teachers, held under the superintendence of Inspectors Maseley and Thurtell, and his name subsequently appeared amongst the four that took highest place.

[3] Having in 1849 been recommended by his medical adviser to remove to a warmer and dryer climate, Wilkins chose Now South Wales in preference to several other countries in which situations were offered.

[3] A system of examining and classifying teachers with graduated rates of pay according to ability was introduced, and, for the first time in Australia, inspectors of schools were appointed.

[3] In the same year Wilkins was appointed one of three commissioners, who were empowered to visit und inspect all the primary schools in the colony that were in receipt of pecuniary assistance from the State.

[3] Wilkins died, following a long illness, at his Guildford home on 10 November 1892, at the age of sixty-five, and was interred in the Anglican section of Rookwood Cemetery; he was survived by his second wife, two sons and three daughters.

In the words of historian Manning Clark, [A]t the Fort Street National School in Sydney William Wilkins was teaching pupil-teachers how to lead the children of New South Wales out of darkness into the light.

He was holding out to them that bright prospect of the day when every locality however remote and every family however humble was supplied with the ameliorating influences of an education, which would teach every man, woman and child in the colony to form the habits of regularity, cleanliness, orderly behaviour, and regard for the rights of both public and private property, as well as the habit of obedience to the law, and respect for duly constituted authority.