[Gsr]

Lessons by correspondence​

Who did part or all of their schooling by correspondence? My hubby and his siblings did a lot of their infants and primary schooling by correspondence, only attending the country primary school for a couple of years before they reached high school. Hubby and one sister did high school by correspondence, being taught by their mum when they needed any help. I did my first year of high school by correspondence before the bus started running to transport kids to the high school in town. My sister did most of her high school by correspondence, she spent nine months at the Far West ChildrenS Home in Manly when she was 13. She went there to have surgeries at the eye hospital in Sydney for her cataracts on her eyes. She did her first form of high school there, then when she came home she completed her second and third years by correspondence. I remember receiving the parcels of lesson material from Sydney, then when we had completed the lesson sheets we had to post them back. There were time periods in place as to when we had to have the lessons completed and returned by. They were then marked by the people who worked at the correspondence school, teachers I presume, and returned to us. We mostly were teaching ourselves following the instructions in our lesson books. If we got really stuck we could ring or write to the correspondence school for more help. We didn’t ring very often as it was an STD call and was too expensive for our parents to afford the phone bill. Back then it was quite common for country kids to do correspondence school. I guess it it not a thing anymore as I think the school of the air would have negated the need for the correspondence school to exist anymore.