TIME CAPSULE: we look back at the history of School of the Air

JUNE 1951 The world’s first School of the Air

I n 1946, on a trip to Alice Springs, Miss Adelaide “Addie” Miethke – a country teacher turned schools inspector, trade unionist and a bit of a firebrand – noticed that outback children seemed especially shy. The idea, she said, “of bridging the lonely distance” began to occupy her mind. Addie was also a member of the Council of the Royal Flying Doctor Service and seized on the idea of using the Flying Doctors’ two-way radio network to deliver educational talks. Years later, with its home at the Alice Springs Higher Primary School, the School of the Air was born. Children on remote stations received lessons in the mail but they now also used pedal-wireless sets to connect and join in classes in Alice Springs. In 1955, Miss Phyllis Gibb was asked to establish a second School of the Air at Broken Hill, serving isolated children in southern Queensland, SA and across more than half of NSW. Lessons were strictly one-way broadcasts but soon a question and answer segment was added, and eventually communal activities such as recorder lessons, sing-alongs and radio plays. Sarah Siemer, who grew up on Calindary Station, 250km north-east of Broken Hill, was among the first students. Her children were also raised with School of the Air and today her grandson, Jack, is school captain. School plays were favourite activities, she says. “We all had parts to play and had to dress up for our roles. Your family would take photos, you’d post them in to the school and they’d turn up in the school magazine at the end of the year.” Distance education centres have now been established all around Australia, using a range of technologies to connect. The School of the Air at Broken Hill still serves an area of almost a million square kilometres and has 80 students. Alice Springs School of the Air has 11 teachers and 101 students who live as far as 2000km apart.

Next year, the School of the Air will celebrate its 70th birthday.