BACK                                                                                                                    HOME Those teachers travelled to station homesteads, settler's cottages, miner' holding and railway camps, and gave the children of the outback some elementary instruction in the basic subjects. To teach more than the rudiments of learning was rarely practicable, because of the great distances that these teachers were required to travel.  When the Postmaster General's Department inaugurated regular weekly or fortnightly services to the isolated area of NSW, the Education Department established its correspondence school at Blackfriars in Sydney to meet, through correspondence lessons, some of the educational needs of children living in isolated areas.  No one could realise the joy of the correspondence school pupils on the receipt of their lesson assignments, unless they too have seen these children waiting for the mailman to arrive.  With the advent of radio broadcasting, another link with the isolated children was made, and special programs given by teachers and broadcast through the Australian Broadcasting Commission supplemented the correspondence lessons.  These broadcasts gave advice to parents and pupils, and gave a degree of pupil-participation. After some years the advantages of two-way radio communication schools became apparent, and in 1950 at Alice Springs the first School of the Air was started.  The wireless network to outback areas maintained by the Flying Doctor Service was used to make these broadcasts available to children in the area, and this allowed teachers and pupils to engage in personal question and answer periods, which proved an educational service for isolated children in the western and north-western area of the state. The offer of the Royal Flying Doctor Service at Broken Hill, to provide transmitting services from its radio station, was accepted with much appreciation, and a proposal to build a special studio at the Broken Hill North Public School for the most effective presentation of lessons was readily approved by the Minister.  In its initial stages, and perhaps for some time to come, the School of the Air was to have a complementary function, in the lessons of the Blackfriars Correspondence School to children in the broadcast area.  It was hoped that the school would help to provide for the isolate child some of the Social interests and social experiences which are necessary for proper educational development and which cannot be gained effectively from correspondence lessons.  No child, by reason of unfavourable isolation in his school career, should be denied the opportunity of adequate educational progress, and the School of the Air has been established to overcome the disability caused by distance from the more closely populated centre.                                                                       LESSONS It was said that the unique feature of the lessons would be the opportunity which children would have to participate in the class activities, ask questions, and check answers with the teacher.  This was distinct from the usual type of broadcast lessons at the time, in which the pupil had a more or less passive role.  At the beginning it was stated that six half-hour lessons would be broadcast each week.  Children hundreds of miles away could be taught by methods resembling closely those sitting in the school's studio.  It was also decided that special classes of children would be assembled in the broadcasts and to convey to the listeners a classroom atmosphere designed to assist in listener participation in the lessons.  Today the School of the Air employs at least 10 teachers plus two temporary teachers.  The School of the Air can be visited from Monday to Friday by contacting the Tourist Information Centre.  It was May 15,1987, that the death was announced of Mrs Phyllis Gibb (aged 82), MBE, founder of the Broken Hill School of the Air.                                                   PHOTOS NEXT PAGE