November 2009 Vol. 1, Issue 10 (PDF - 16.2Mb) - Department of ...

Distance Education Centre
celebrates a century
For the last 100 years, the old Correspondence School has been helping students from Victoria’s
most remote corners to overcome the tyranny of distance, writes Jennifer Cameron
Hospital visitor Beverley Shearer checks
over six-year-old patient Gary’s work, 1966
Each school is a small community: a village
where we nurture and educate the young,
and send them out into the world to find
their place within other communities.
Distance Education Centre Victoria
(DECV) – formerly the Correspondence
School – is also a community, which, from
the outside, appears to be student-free.
There is no evidence of uniforms, teachers
on yard-duty, ringing bells, raised voices or
childish behaviour.
Actually, DECV is home to 150 staff who
look after more than 3000 students ranging
from Prep to VCE. Principal Bronwyn
Stubbs oversees a staff with a hierarchy
similar to that of mainstream schools, with
assistant principals, KLA leaders, year level
coordinators, and welfare and support staff.
Our large campus is set beside the Darebin
Creek in Thornbury. We even deliver a
curriculum for practical subjects, including
art, music, physical education and dance.
I came to DECV after teaching for many
years in a mainstream high school, with
little knowledge of the school’s history. I was
certainly unaware that I was walking into its
centenary year. Little did I know, that 100
years ago, trainee teachers from remote country
schools who could not come to Melbourne for
evening and weekend classes did their training
by correspondence. In May 1914, Mrs Mabel
Prewett, living in a remote logging settlement
in the Otways, wrote to the Victorian
Education Department seeking help with the
education of her children, and so began the
correspondence school for primary children.
During 1916–1917,
returned soldiers
participated in
teacher training by
correspondence,
which would assist
them to integrate
back into the
community.
By 1922, the
Victorian Correspondence
School was offering correspondence
at the Secondary level.
Today, DECV caters for Victorian students
who are travelling within Australia or living
overseas or are unable to attend their local
school for a variety of reasons. Some attend
their local high school, but do not have
access to subjects of their choice. We also
provide education for elite sports students
from the Australian Institute of Sport, young
Olympians in training, ballet students,
prisoners, and students involved in the arts
such Gabrielle Cilmi, the pop singer.
A young boy at his desk in a makeshift
room on his family’s remote property.
A family’s house-bus parked near
Killarney in southwest Victoria, 1970s.
John Nelson broadcasting on S/W Radio
VL3RT. On the wall is a mao covering
some of the routes being travelled by
the school’s itinerant families.