Ellen Fitzgerald awakens to two jobs on a 24,000-hectare cattle station located between Winton and Muttaburra. One includes branding, water points, fences, and the relentless pace of cattle country. The other is sitting down with her seven-year-old daughter Vivien and attempting to manage something that, on a good day, works like a school. When the teacher has to cancel the online lesson due to an unforeseen circumstance, she is left on her own with no backup materials.
“I don’t have a framework for what to teach her,” she recently stated. Even though that sentence is brief, it has a lot of meaning.
Long referred to as “correspondence” or “papers,” Queensland’s decision to phase out the printed, step-by-step lesson materials has subtly disrupted the daily routine of families who depend on distance learning. These weren’t merely worksheets. For many years, they served as the framework that prevented remote learning from collapsing in the event that the satellite signal failed, a teacher called in sick, or the internet went down. They became the focal point of families’ entire home classroom routines.
Australia’s system of distance learning has always been a bit of a patchwork, put together more out of necessity than intention. A straightforward issue gave rise to the first “schools of the air”: kids in the outback needed an education but couldn’t really take a bus there. What emerged was a truly innovative solution: certified instructors teaching over great distances, initially via radio and subsequently via the internet. Families adjusted to it even though it wasn’t ideal.
The backup is no longer there, which is a change. The self-directed learning resources that previously allowed a child to catch up in math or English during a missed lesson have been removed from the rotation. Online-only delivery, which sounds contemporary and effective until you’re faced with a cloud-covered sky and a connection that won’t load a video, takes their place. This decision seems to have been made by someone who hasn’t spent much time in remote Queensland.
Here, it’s worth taking a step back to see the bigger picture. Australia has a sizable population of people enrolled in distance learning programs. Approximately 30,000 students nationwide receive their education via home-based or remote learning. Many live in truly remote areas, with the closest town being an hour’s drive away on a dirt road. The school of the air is the only option available to these families; it is not a lifestyle choice. The effects are immediate and significant when the system is altered without prior notice or sufficient replacement.
It is not unreasonable for parents to be frustrated. Additionally, it isn’t performative. These individuals, who simultaneously oversee livestock operations and raise children, developed a feasible schedule around resources that the system has since removed. Before the resources began to diminish, 62% of Australian parents already thought that their children would not benefit from remote learning during the pandemic. There was already little faith in the system.
It’s also important to consider what parents are actually expected to do when their children attend school remotely. In contrast to homeschooling, where families create their own curricula, distance education assigns content to qualified teachers. The parent’s job is to supervise; they sit next to the child, keep things going, and cover any gaps. Without materials, it becomes impossible to fill the gaps. Families like the Fitzgeralds are currently caught in this dilemma.
It’s still unclear if Queensland’s education department fully recognizes the scope of the issue it has created or if it believes it is manageable. Families in remote Australia are undoubtedly being asked to do more with less on already difficult terrain, both literally and figuratively. The children who are learning at these stations are not voluntarily falling behind. And it’s difficult not to think that someone overlooked that at some point in the series of choices that brought us to this point.
