Australia

CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOLS

A peculiar feature of education in Australia is School of the Air system. Schools of the Air provide education to the children who live in remote parts of Australia. They use two-way radio and have their lessons though they remain physically in their own homes.

In a continent as vast as Australia there are many children in the "outback" areas who are far away from any organized school. For them a system of correspondence was established, which has now grown to include secondary and technical courses. Correspondence study "School Through the Mailbox" - does not sound very exciting, but it has become a rather romantic feature of Australian education.

It began in 1914 when a settler in the Otway forest region of Victoria wrote to the Melbourne Teachers College saying that his children were out of reach of any school and might grow up illiterate. He asked if anything could be done to help them. The students of the college undertook to supply lessons by correspondence. As soon as this became known, other applicants wrote in, and the students were unable to cope with the situation. The Education Department then assigned regular teachers to the work and started a state correspondence school.

As the system grew, a special school building in each capital city was set aside as the headquarters, and a special staff was gathered from the experienced teachers who were interested in this type of work.

Subjects are divided into one- or two-week units, with assignments to be carried out in each unit after the necessary reading and study has been completed. Each assignment included new material, illustrations, practice examples, and finally, a test to be sent to school. Each pupil has three workbooks, one at home, one at the correspondence school for correction, and on in transit.

(From "Australia and New Zealand in brief" by V.V. Oshchepkova)