School of the Air in Alice Springs, Australia

About 100 children go to School of the Air.

The youngest are four years old. The oldest are about 14. Some live on farms with lots of cattle. Some live more than 1,000 kilometers from Alice Springs!

The school has about 100 students and around 20 teachers and office staff. Students range from 4 years old, in preschool, up to about 14, in Year 9. After that, most move on to another distance-education school or to a boarding school.

Classes are small, from about 8 to 20 students each, with a teacher for each year level. The classmates in one lesson might live hundreds of kilometers apart. The school is paid for by the Northern Territory Government's Department of Education, and gifts from the public help pay for extras.

ASSOA enrolls approximately 100 distance-education students and has around 20 teaching and administrative staff. Students range from 4 years (preschool) to 14 years (Year 9); most then continue at the Northern Territory School of Distance Education or at private boarding schools. Classes range from about 8 to 20 students, and each year level has its own teacher, who prepares and assesses the work in line with the Australian Curriculum.

The Northern Territory Department of Education funds the school, its learning materials and its equipment. Over the decades that equipment has included two-way radio transceivers, television sets, video and cassette recorders; today each remote family has a satellite dish and computer equipment. Because the technology is expensive, public donations, collected partly through the school's visitor center, help pay for it. Some families have stayed for generations: the school tells of the Driver family, with students in the 1950s, in the 1980s and from 2009.

Before school, there may be jobs to do, like feeding young calves.

Then it is time to log on. The children see their teacher and classmates on the screen. A grown-up at home helps them with their work.

A school day often starts early, because there are jobs to do first. The school describes students who help clean a roadhouse dining room before the truck drivers arrive, or who feed a station's young calves.

Then students log on to their online lesson. Younger children have lessons of about 30 minutes and older ones up to an hour, usually ten lessons a week in primary school. The rest of the day they work through materials their teachers have sent. A home tutor, a parent or someone the family employs, supervises them. In total, students spend five to six hours a day on schoolwork.

The school's account of a typical day begins with chores: helping clean a roadhouse dining area before road-train drivers and tourists arrive, or, in a remote Aboriginal community, harvesting bush apples before the day gets hot. Then the student goes online for an Interactive Distance Learning (IDL) lesson. Younger students generally have 30-minute lessons and older students up to an hour, usually ten a week in primary, with more for some electives. One-on-one or small-group Private Lesson Times (PLTs) add extra help.

Students spend five to six hours a day, five days a week, on schoolwork; outside lessons they work through Distance Education Units of Learning mailed to them and resources on class websites. In the higher years, teachers avoid setting work that would need more than half the day on computers. A home tutor supervises: a parent or guardian, or someone the family employs, often called a "govie," short for governess. The 2026 school year runs in four terms, from 29 January to 10 December.

Long ago, there was no internet in the outback.

Families had special radios. They used them to call the Flying Doctor. A woman named Adelaide Miethke had an idea: teachers could give lessons over the radio too!

Before the 1950s, outback families taught their children with lessons sent by post. But they had another link to the world: the pedal radio, invented by Alfred Traeger in 1929, which connected them to the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

In 1944, Adelaide Miethke of the Flying Doctor Service visited a cattle station and saw that families struggled with lessons by post and that children missed friends their own age. She suggested teaching over the Flying Doctor radio. After a trial, School of the Air officially opened in Alice Springs on 8 June 1951. At first there were three half-hour lessons a week, and children could only listen.

Before School of the Air, remote families relied on correspondence lessons posted from the South Australian Correspondence School. Alfred Traeger's pedal radio of 1929 had already linked stations to the Flying Doctor service. In 1944 Adelaide Miethke, a member of the Flying Doctor Service of South Australia, saw on a cattle-station visit that children struggled with correspondence lessons and lacked contact with peers, and proposed lessons over the Flying Doctor radio network.

With the Flying Doctor Service, the Northern Territory Education Department and Alice Springs Higher Primary School, a trial began in 1950: a landline ran from the Flying Doctor base to the school, and teachers volunteered to present scripted lessons. The school officially opened on 8 June 1951. Early broadcasts were three half-hour lessons a week, delivered like lectures, until teachers added a question-and-answer segment. Molly Ferguson became the sole teacher in 1954, when the school moved to a purpose-built studio at the base of Anzac Hill, and in the mid-1950s a library began posting books to students. For almost 40 years, two-way radio was the school's backbone.

Today, every family has a satellite dish.

It brings the internet to their home. Children see and hear their teacher on a video screen. They can talk to their friends in class too.

Over the years, the school kept trying new technology. In the early 1990s, many remote families got better telephones, so children could phone their teachers for the first time. A 1992 trial of television lessons by satellite cost too much to continue.

In 2000 the school started using the internet, and in 2002 it began a system called Interactive Distance Learning, or IDL. Today each family has a satellite dish and a computer, and lessons are live video calls. Teachers teach from five studios in Alice Springs, while most students connect using satellite internet.

In 1974 the school became autonomous, every family received a transceiver and the school gained its own radio frequency; in 1978 it moved to purpose-built studios on Head Street with 13 teachers. Upgraded telephone systems in the early 1990s let children phone teachers for the first time, while a 1992 trial of direct satellite television lessons was judged too costly.

The school began using the internet in 2000. In 2002 a two-way satellite project grew into Interactive Distance Learning (IDL), which combines satellite technology, teaching materials and strategies, and by 2006 the school was making steady progress with online classes over satellite broadband. IDL uses video-conferencing software called REACT (Remote Education and Conferencing Tool), with lessons delivered from five studios. Today all lessons are online, and most students use low-earth-orbit satellite internet for high-definition video lessons. Teachers also use Google Classroom, email, phone calls and Australia Post.

School of the Air children do meet each other!

Once a term, they travel to Alice Springs for a special school week. They go on trips, run races and swim. Teachers also drive out to visit each child at home.

Learning on a screen is not the whole story. Once each term, students are invited to come together in Alice Springs for in-school weeks, with excursions, camping trips, athletics and swimming carnivals, and an end-of-year show.

Teachers travel too. Primary teachers usually visit each student's home once a year, which can mean a long drive on dirt roads. These home visits help teachers see what life is like for their students, from limited power to roads that need four-wheel drive.

Face-to-face contact has been part of the school since its early years. Molly Ferguson organized the first get-together in 1955, when 30 students aged 5 to 15 gathered in Alice Springs; the first excursion, 18 students to Adelaide, followed in 1957, and the first patrol visit to students' homes in 1960.

Today students are encouraged to attend in-school weeks once a term, with excursions, camps, athletics and swimming carnivals and an end-of-year performance. Primary teachers usually make one home visit to each student a year. The school says these visits show teachers the conditions families work with, such as four-wheel-drive-only dirt roads, limited resources and power that is not always available 24 hours a day. A visitor center, opened at the school in 1996, shows the public its broadcasting studio, where visitors may be able to watch a live or pre-recorded lesson.