School of the Air

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 traditionally conducted by radio, although this is now being replaced by internet technology. In these areas, the school-age population is too small for a conventional school to be viable.

The first School of the Air lessons were officially sent from the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Alice Springs on 8 June 1951. The service celebrated its 50th jubilee on 9 May 2001, ahead of the real jubilee on 8 June. Each state of Australia that utilizes this means of training has well-documented checks and overviews of the service.

There are School of the Air programmes in all states except Tasmania.

School classes were conducted via shortwave radio from 2003 until 2009, after which most schools switched to wireless internet technologies to deliver lessons that include live one-way video feeds and clear two-way audio.

Each student has direct contact with a teacher in a major 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.

Traditionally, 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.

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