Alice Springs School of the Air

The Alice Springs School of the Air is a distance education organization based in Alice Springs which provides teaching, education materials and personal communication for remote children in the Northern Territory outback of Australia.

In the first part of the 20th century a Uniting Church pastor, The Rev John Flynn, set up his "mantle of Safety" consisting of airplanes, hospitals and radios to address the lack of medical help.

[4] On a trip to remote cattle stations during this time with local teacher Les Dodd she recognized the difficulties outback families were facing with correspondence lessons, and that children were lacking in social contact.

It occurred to her at the time that radio could provide a community aspect to the education of children in the bush.

In 1950 she approached John Flynn seeking permission to run a trial over the RFDS radio of a "School of the Air".

The first teacher was Mr Kissell of the Alice Springs Higher Primary School who was the leader of the broadcast team.

Molly was awarded the MBE for her work with the School of the Air in that year and retired to get married.

She used her own car initially but the visits were deemed so successful that the Government provided vehicles from its pool and expenses for future patrols.

At this time students were still using materials from the South Australian Correspondence School with work being received from there and returned there for marking.

The school moved to its current location at Head Street, Alice Springs in 1977 although teachers still had to travel to the, now, Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) to actually broadcast the lessons.

The official opening of the premises occurred the following year and radio broadcasts were then made from a specially built studio.

New technology in the form of Quick-mail, new phones and facsimile were installed in 1993 and four computers were made available for students in years 6 and 7.

The march of technology continued with Mr Tony Richards employed in 1999 to set up internet access, email and web services (MOASS) to School of the Air families and email became an important communications tool especially for older students.

A new extension to the Head Street Premises was completed in 1995 which provided a new visitor centre, a larger teacher preparation area and more storage space.

[7] Prince Charles and Lady Diana visited the school and spoke to the children over the radio in 1983.