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Perhaps the best way of thinking about schools and schooling in Regional Australia is to start by linking schools to population structures since these help determine available offerings.
Rural and Remote
The term rural and remote is often used to describe those vast areas of Regional Australia remote from urban centres. Thinly populated, this is the Australia of the outback legend.
People choosing to live in rural or remote Australia for work or life style reasons do face difficult educational choices because the thinly distributed population is simply not large enough to support certain facilities at local level.
At primary level (years 1 to 6), the key choices are:
The position becomes more difficult at secondary level (years 7-12) because of the greater variety in and demands of the curriculum as well as reduced number of schools (there are more primary than secondary schools). Here the options are:
If you are interested in accepting the joys and challenges of working and living in outback Australia, then we suggest that you start by visiting The Isolated Childrens' Parent's Association web site - http://www.icpa.com.au/.
ICPA (Aust) is a voluntary national parent body dedicated to ensuring that all geographically isolated students have equality with their non-isolated peers, of access to an appropriate education. The Association has over 3,300 member families, residing in the more remote parts of Australia, who all share a common concern of gaining access to education for their children and the provision of services required to achieve this. Membership includes a cross section of Australia's rural and remote population and includes fishermen, miners, itinerant employees, farmers, pastoralists and small business owners.
The ICPA web site contains a range of information on rural and remote education issues and includes links setting out the financial assistance available from Federal and State Governments.
As you refine your thinking in terms of target localities, we then suggest that you visit the relevant local government web site. Our useful links section contains information on accessing these. Most local governments in outback Australia will be happy to provide you with information on educational facilities in their area.
For those interested in the home schooling option, and this applies more broadly than rural and remote, we suggest that you visit the website of the Home Education Association Inc of Australia, http://www.hea.asn.au/hea/.
Other Rural
We use the term other rural to describe all those rural areas within a reasonable school bus or car ride of a range of educational facilities within neaby urban (village, town, city) areas. Options here are best considered in the context of those urban areas.
What do we mean by reasonable school bus or car ride? The benchmark here is provided by Australia's major metropilitan centres.
Regional Australians are used to driving considerable distances whether for work or pleasure. However, they shudder at the metro experience where it is perfectly normal for parents and/or students to spend an hour, sometimes two hours, simply travelling to and from school. While there are exceptions, the great bulk of Australia's rural school population lives within an hour of the nearest school facilities.
So from a practical perspective, if you are interested in the rural option then one simple test is to look at actual education travel times on the ground in your preferred location. In search terms, this is best done inititially by visiting the local government site in your target areas in order to identify local schools.
Village, Smaller Town
Every Australian state or territory government maintains a public education system. These systems form the educational backbone, especially in smaller regional communities. Schools can vary from small single teacher schools to substantial primary or secondary schools.
Many schools in regional Australia are smaller then their metro equivalents. This can mean more limited subject choices. However, in both regional and metro areas, it is the enthusiasm of the teachers themselves combined with access to system wide resources that determines the value of the education.
Enthusiasm is central. A powerfully motivated teacher will educate your children far better than a less motivated one even if the second has access to better resources. In fact, some of our smaller public schools combine the best of both worlds, highly motivated teachers combined with the latest technology supplied through various education department programs.
To illustrate this, a special feature looks at the views of some of the teachers in smaller NSW regional schools. This enthusiasm helps explain why regional schools often do better than their metro equivalents, especially when the raw performance data is adjusted for population size and background. More
Large Town, City
The majority of Regional Australia's people live in larger towns or regional cities ranging in popluation from 15,000 to over 250.000. This includes two capitol cities - Canberra and Hobart - classified as belonging to Regional Australia because their population is so much smaller than Australia's major metro centres.
Canberra and Hobart fall in a special class because their Governing role provides added facilities. However, all of Regional Australia's larger towns and regional cities offer a range of schooling choices.These choices are often wider in real terms than the metro alternative simply because schools are often located within short driving or even walking distances.
To illustrate this, we have taken the educational centre of Armidale in NSW as a case study. More
Because of diversity between centres, the schooling opportunities offered by each centre in Regional Australia are best investigated on an individual basis.