Did you ever wonder how children who live too far from schools are educated?

By David McClelland

While serving in the United States Air Force, I was stationed in Australia for 28 months during 1971 - 1973. We were in the outback and learned about some unusual programs backed by the Australian government. One was the Flying Doctor Service where a sick or injured person in the outback is treated by a doctor who flies in and provides emergency treatment and, if necessary, transports the patient to the closest hospital.

Children whose families live too far from towns with the closest schools must take advantage of the School of the Air, which began in 1951 and continues today. These are correspondence schools catering for the primary and early secondary education of children in remote and outback areas of Australia.

These Schools were conducted via shortwave radio from 1951 through 2003 and then converted to wireless internet technologies to deliver lessons which include live, one-way video feeds and clear, two-way audio. Each student has direct contact with the teacher in a major inland town such as Broken Hill, Alice Springs or Meekatharra. Each student spends approximately one hour each day receiving group or individual instructions from the teacher, and the rest of the day working through the assigned materials with a parent, older sibling or a hired home-stay tutor.

The School of the Air is frequently the isolated children's first opportunity to interact with children outside of their own families. This is supplemented by 3 or 4 annual gatherings where the children travel to the school to spend a week with their teachers and classmates. 

If you visit Australia, you may visit one such school in Alice Springs in Central Australia. The visitor's center is set up to enable tourists the opportunity to observe live classes and be shown recorded lessons. With so much of Australia considered to be in the outback, The Flying Doctor Service and The School of the Air are essential.