School of the Air is a generic term for correspondence schools catering for the primary and early secondary education of children in remote and outback Australia where some or all classes were historically conducted by radio, although this is now replaced by telephone and internet technology. In these areas, the school-age population is too small for a conventional school to be viable.
Circa 1929, Alfred Traeger invented the pedal radio which allowed people in remote areas to communicate over long distances, reducing their social isolation. [1] One important use of the technology was to receive medical advice or summon a doctor by contacting the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Educator Adelaide Miethke realised the same technology could be used for by teachers to deliver lessons to students in remote locations, leading to the establishment of School of the Air. [2] [3]
The first School of the Air lessons were officially delivered from the Royal Flying Doctor Service base in Alice Springs on 8 June 1951. [4]
The service celebrated its 50th jubilee on 9 May 2001, ahead of the real jubilee on 8 June. [5] [6] [7]
School classes were conducted via shortwave radio from 1951 until 2009, [8] after which most schools switched to wireless internet technologies to deliver lessons that include live one-way video feeds and clear two-way audio. [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]
The service celebrated its 70th year on 8 June 2021. [14]
There are School of the Air programmes in all states except Tasmania. [15]
Each student has direct contact with a teacher in an inland town such as Broken Hill, Alice Springs or Meekatharra. Each student typically spends one hour per day receiving group or individual lessons 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.
Originally the students received their course materials and returned their written work and projects to their hub centre using either the Royal Flying Doctor Service or post office services. However the extension of Internet services into the outback now enables more rapid review of each child's homework.
As the children are in isolated situations, the School of the Air is frequently their first chance of socialisation with children outside their immediate family. This is supplemented by 3 or 4 annual gatherings where the children travel to the school to spend one week with their teacher and classmates.
Studies have shown that such education is on par with, if not better than, standards set by the traditional methods of schooling. [16]
Each state of Australia that uses this means of education has well-documented checks and overviews of the service. [17]
In 2009 as part of the Q150 celebrations, the School of the Air was announced as one of the Q150 Icons of Queensland for its role as an iconic "innovation and invention". [18]
Schools of the Air operate from:
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Stuart Highway is a major Australian highway. It runs from Darwin, in the Northern Territory, via Tennant Creek and Alice Springs, to Port Augusta in South Australia; it has a distance of 2,720 km (1,690 mi). Its northern and southern extremities are segments of Australia's Highway 1. The principal north–south route through the central interior of mainland Australia, the highway is often referred to simply as "The Track".
The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS), commonly known as the Flying Doctor, is an air medical service in Australia. It is a non-profit organisation that provides emergency and primary health care services for those living in rural, remote and regional areas of Australia who cannot access a hospital or general practice due to the vast distances of the Outback.
Alfred Hermann Traeger, known as Alf Traeger, was an Australian engineer and inventor, chiefly known for the development of the pedal radio used by both the School of the Air and by the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
Meekatharra is a town in the Mid West region of Western Australia. Meekatharra is a Yamatji word meaning "place of little water". At the 2016 census, Meekatharra had a population of 708, with 34.0% being of Aboriginal descent.
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The VKS-737 Radio Network is a division of the Australian National 4WD Radio Network, a national Public Benevolent Institution, established for Outback travellers who are in distress by providing them with emergency assistance and support in cooperation with other organisations.
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CDT is an Australian digital television station broadcasting in remote central and eastern Australia. It is jointly owned by Southern Cross Austereo and Imparja Television Pty Ltd and operates under the company name Central Digital Television.
Adelaide Laetitia "Addie" Miethke,, was a South Australian educator and teacher who was pivotal in the formation of the School of the Air using the existing Royal Flying Doctor Service radio network.
The Round Australia Trial was a long distance rally, which was run on multiple occasions between 1953 and 1998, circumnavigating Australia. Its early years were tremendously popular as the roads through large portions of the country, particularly west of Adelaide, were unformed. Automobile manufacturers enthused over the event as it provided a particularly severe test event for their products, proving their cars were able to stand up to whatever conditions remote Australia could provide. Early editions of the event were heroic tests and were front-page fodder for the newspapers of the era.
The Alice Springs School of the Air is a distance education organization based in Alice Springs which provides teaching, education materials and personal communication for remote children in the Northern Territory outback of Australia.
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