Long Distance Education

We visited the Longreach School of Distance Education (formerly the Longreach School of the Air) and a very interesting morning. When we arrived school had already started for the day - the DE kids start their day at 8.00am sharp! We could see the Year 3 teacher, Ms Hewson, in her soundproof classroom and hear the kids online, some hundreds of kms away. A science lesson was in progress on the dissection of a piece of fruit and we could see each child doing a 'diagram' on the 'blackboard', which was actually a whiteboard! Each child is able to speak to the teacher individually and Ms Hewson was able to monitor the drawings of individual students per the whiteboard. The family pays $350 per year to lease the computer and all the latest, greatest, programs required, including maintenance, to home school their children. The whole technology set up was fantastic and very interesting to watch.

Apart from the technology aspect, the school looked like any other. Twenty-four teachers cover both Primary and Secondary levels. The school buildings housed: Student work proudly displayed; a well equipped library (for not only books but musical instruments, games, videos and toys), made possible by the donation of $15 by visitors to purchase a book with their name and home town engraved in it and left in the library; and 7 studios for teachers to conduct their classes over the airways. Special effort is made to keep the grass green by the installation of 4 rain water tanks because some of the children would otherwise never see grass. Can you imagine that!

There are 168 students enrolled in the school which covers an area twice the size of Victoria and Tasmania combined and most will go on to boarding school for Secondary. There are those families though who choose not to their children away from home, or simply can't afford to, so there are 11 Secondary students up to Year 10 level and only 2 who are currently undertaking Years 11 & 12. During a guided tour around the school we were shown the classrooms (2) that are used when the kids all came together for 'camps' a couple of times a year. When a particular child comes to the school for camp, the parent or nanny has to bring all of the children in the family because often dad is often busy running the property, which means accommodation is required for the whole family. The logistics for the home-schooling parent or nanny for schooling different grades of kids are mind-boggling. The organisation that goes into giving isolated kids an education must be very complex but in typical Aussie fashion there is obviously resourcefulness and ingenuity in action for what appears to be an extremely successful means to an education. The website has some great info in you're interested: http://www.longreacsde.eq.edu.au/