A few days ago I was lucky enough to visit the Katherine School of Air.
Nothing to do with flying planes (though that would have been exciting), School of the Air is the name given to schools that serve remote (far away) parts of Australia. Some stations (farms) are so far from towns that it would be impossible for the children that live there to attend school.
Katherine School of Air (KSA) started in 1966, using radio to communicate with students. The teacher would sit in a studio, and deliver a lesson over radio. Students would have been posted work, and could sit at home to listen to the lesson, do the work, and post it back. Later, students could ask questions and converse with the teacher. The signal wasn't always very good - clouds, wind and rain all affected the signal. If you looked at the 'Totally Tropical' page, you'll have seen that the wet season lasts for several months, so it must have been a little annoying to listen to crackly radio for a good proportion of the year.
Suprisingly, this carried on until only 4 years ago when internet learning started. Now the teacher and students can see each other, and although there is a slight delay it is much more interactive. It was a big task to upgrade, as you will find out...
KSA covers an area of 800,000km square. The UK is about 243,000km. There are also many other School of Air branches. When it was first set up, the technical guy had to drive or fly to every station to install the radio equipment. To upgrade, a satellite dish and computer had to be installed with every family. A BIG job!
There is a lot of responsibility on the students and their families to keep up to date with work and posting it back. For the people in more remote areas posting/receiving mail will only be possible once a week - they can't just pop to a post box - they will probably drive to a town/roadhouse once a week for fuel, food and mail. Also, they will only have a 45 minute 'lesson' with the teacher every day. The rest is all up to them.
Sometimes the teachers go out to visit the students at home, to see what their life is like and help with any problems. Remember that many of the children will be heavily involved in farm work, especially at busy times of year. The students all come into town a few times a year, for swimming week, a week of lessons, sports day, and they all go on a camp together too.
I could write loads about this because I found it really interesting, it's so different to our school! I don't want to go on for ages though, so it's best if I stop, and you can ask any questions you want about this - just post comments. I see all the comments before they go online, so if you don't want you name to appear, just tell me.
This week I also met the teacher from a very small school - 40 pupils! She teachers years 1-3 (same as ours) and has a class of 11 students. Some School of Air students also join her class for two days a week, when they can get into the village (Adelaide River).
What problems do you think there might be with School of Air?
Would you like to have a School of Air?
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