While most children are clambering into their uniforms, getting ready to catch the bus or walk to their local school, there is a group of students who have a vastly different routine. Some are barefoot or wearing thongs as their classroom floats past yet another island in the Whitsundays. Others are doing their lessons in a caravan with the Bungle Bungles in the Kimberleys as their backdrop, or from a remote village in China or Zambia.

These kids are referred to as “yachties” and “travellers”. Their lives may appear a world away from the humdrum of settled routine but one thing they have in common with other students is their link to NSW public schools via the Sydney Distance Education Primary School (SDEPS) – one of 11 primary schools in the state that provide education to students in remote or unusual situations.

SDEPS’s roll-call is disparate. About 80 per cent of the students are with their families roaming the planet on long vacations or with international humanitarian organisations.  Another 10 per cent have acute medical conditions which temporarily prevent them from attending their local school. A further 10 per cent of local students are managed in the home setting because of personal circumstances.

The principal, Robin Roberts, says the school offers almost everything found in a regular NSW public school – even physical education lessons.

“We offer dance classes, creative arts programs … we can’t do team sports yet, but the students actually video a lot of the work they’re doing or creative things they’ve made and send them back to us,” he says.

SDEPS came out of the old Correspondence School, established in 1916 to support children living in remote areas of NSW. Mr Roberts says people find it strange to have a distance education school plonked in the middle of Sydney. Indeed its headquarters, in Stanmore in Sydney’s inner west, looks like a school but there is no playground rowdiness and no thunder of feet racing down the corridors.

Yet, a world map – choked with coloured tacks – acts as the roll, pinpointing the students’ whereabouts: Qatar, Greece, Romania, Turkey, Algeria, the Red Sea, Scandinavia, Nicaragua, Thailand, Vietnam, Paraguay and Namibia are some of the “classroom” sites. Whether it’s a case of technology making the tyranny of distance obsolete or simply that more families have developed wanderlust, the school’s enrolments are rising exponentially. Last year enrolment figures doubled.

“They’re coming and going the whole year,” Mr Robert says. “We will probably grow to close to 200 students [in 2008].”

The SDEPS teachers sit at work stations surrounded by their students’ postcard-like photos. Their desks are outfitted with gadgets – a telephone, computer, tape recorder, DVD burner and digital camera. Two studios allow the teachers to film their whiteboard-driven lessons. These lessons are burnt to a DVD and delivered to students via post or courier.

Getting lessons to yachties is always “interesting”, Mr Roberts says. A port is nominated and lessons are prepared and shipped out about six weeks in advance.

“It’s hard to maintain contact but we seem to do a good job in getting their lessons to them,” Mr Roberts says. “They call into port and then manage to get their lessons back to us.” Delivering materials to some countries with strict customs protocols can also prove challenging.

“[Some] countries don’t like things that are on a cassette or video tape. They either impound the whole lot or remove the tapes with all the teaching instructions on it,” Mr Robert says.

“A teacher who produces six weeks of work for students can become a bit devastated to find that all that work has disappeared and they scramble to get a whole lot of lessons over to them again.”

Parents tutor their children through each key learning area. Teachers give support through emails, phone calls and SMS. Each teacher has a class of about 14 students.

Mr Roberts says the regular contact with the children’s teachers gives parents an appreciation of the learning process and the time it takes to prepare lessons.

“Parents really enjoy being involved in the teaching process. There are no surprises when they get the report card.”

Discipline is also outsourced: “The parents do it,” he adds.

One family, the Hawkins, have had three children (Edward, Alice and Will in Years 6, 5 and 3, respectively) enrolled in the school since 2006. Mrs Hawkins wrote of the value of the distance school while the family sails around the world.

“To be so closely involved with your child’s progression from being unable to read and write to writing journals, reading books and tackling the maths with ease has perhaps, to me, been the most rewarding experience of all,” Mrs Hawkins wrote.

“The work can certainly be demanding in terms of the depth and detail required … what we really appreciated, however, is the flexibility that the program allows. We could get through a lot of schoolwork on a wet, windy day at anchor, freeing up time for when the sun was shining.”

Another yachting family, the Harpers, have had a similar experience.

“Natasha loved the idea of being able to do school in her pyjamas and going to snorkelling or kayaking during her breaks,” wrote Allison Harper.

“[She] has more than kept up with her land-based peers. I think that she has really benefited from the one-on-one attention as she was a very quiet child who would never ask a question in her regular class.”

Mr Roberts believes the students’ learning is often accelerated because of the smaller class sizes and the individual learning approach. It also means students can transition to their regular school with minimum disruption.

“A teacher on a telephone lesson can spend 20 to 30 minutes in a day talking specifically about the student’s work and how to improve the work,” he says.

“They [students] develop self-reliance and time-management skills and they take more responsibility for their learning.

“A lot of people think distance education is pulling materials off the shelf – [but] everything is manipulated to meet the students’ needs. If they’re working at Year 4 in English but Year 6 in maths we can accommodate that without any difficulty.”

However, keeping in contact with families regularly is a feat for all staff. “Our main frustration is the fact that we don’t have the reliable internet connection [with students in remote locations]. Things are changing so quickly, I imagine in a year or two the way we deliver lessons will be entirely different,” Mr Roberts says.

It’s also a challenge for teachers to develop relationships with their students when they have only met them once face to face.

Teacher Anna Armstrong says having had pen-pals helped her get to know her students and track them via the web. “A lot of the families have websites so you can just jump online and read their journals and just straight away get in touch with what they’re doing,” she says.

Caroline Casey says she calls her students a couple of times a week “to keep them grounded and to remember they’re in a real school”.

“Just because they’re on a boat or in some nice foreign country, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have to do their schoolwork – they have to be disciplined in that way.”