Open Schooling: Selected Experiences
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Abstract
The first open school programme is believed to have begun in 1914 as correspondence lessons prepared at the request of a parent in Beech Forest in the Otway Mountains in Australia. By 1916, a special correspondence branch had been established. The success of the school programme led to the spread of open schools to several other Australian states and territories. Open schools were then introduced in Canada in 1919 and in New Zealand in 1922. The popular view that open learning and distance education trickled down from higher education is unfounded. In the 1960s, distance education expanded massively across many countries, especially in higher education as open universities. Meanwhile distance education at the primary and secondary levels in open schools was confined to only a few countries. As a result, the contemporary view of distance education is primarily associated with the open university. The open school movement, however, is an idea whose time has come. Many countries have now set up open schools for primary and secondary students, for example, in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, South Korea, and Zambia. Initiatives to establish similar institutions are under consideration in South Africa, Egypt, China, Nigeria, and many other countries. Although having begun much later than open universities, open schools are rapidly gaining ground and some of them have quite high enrolments. For example, the National Open School of India, which started in 1989, now has a total enrolment of 250,000 students
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India, Australia, Canada, UK
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1994
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Commonwealth of Learning (COL)