Today we visited the School of the Air. That was fantastic. We were there for just over an hour and were able to listen in on two lessons, one for Year 1 kids and the other for Year 3 kids. The on air, (it’s actually a telephone and a computer link up), lessons go for 30 minutes. The rest of the time the kids are working on their computer and/or books by themselves. A lot of the kids have a governess to assist as home tutor or the parent does it. The school in the Isa looks after 160 kids in a 2000km radius, that’s the largest area covered by one school in Australia.
The school looks like just any other school, with projects, drawings, photos, posters etc plastered all over the walls, it just doesn’t have any kids. I always think of the kids whose parents own the station as being the pupils which of course they are but there’s also an awful lot of kids whose parents are fencing contractors, sheep shearers and itinerant workers. There was a photo on the wall of one little boy whose “classroom” was a table under a tree and a satellite phone. Apparently you have to remain perfectly still with no background noise for the sat phones to work.
Workbooks and lesson materials are packaged up and sent out to students in the mail every 10 weeks, 10 weeks in advance as some of the very remote stations only receive their mail once a month, others may have to drive 200-300 kms to go and collect their mail.The cost of educating a child in a remote location is about $18,000 per year. Families often have to pay over $100.00 a month for their internet connections. There’s no broadband for most of these students.