Class far from anywhere, and far from cheap

IN the centre of a neat classroom out the back o' Bourke, four desks stand at three different heights.

Louth Public School

IN the centre of a neat classroom out the back o' Bourke, four desks stand at three different heights.

Nearby sit computers, iPads, an electronic whiteboard and a flatscreen TV, while outside is a bell that first called children to school 132 years ago. A dozen or so scattered homes form a small town, population 32, from which bald, red roads stretch out in three directions.

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Louth Public School in western NSW is not just far from anywhere - it's also far from cheap.

In 2010, with just three students, the cost per head approached $130,000, which was the nation's highest.

The Weekend Australian's comprehensive analysis shows for the first time the most and least expensive schools in the nation to run.

Leaving aside special schools for students with disabilities, it is the nation's 2000-plus "small schools" - those with fewer than 100 students - that cost the most, not the elite, high-fee independent schools.

Most of the high-cost schools, such as Louth, are in rural and remote areas, where governments are obliged to run a school no matter how few students live in town. The vast majority of a school's budget, up to 80 or 90 per cent, is spent paying its teachers.

Nationwide, in 2010, 109 schools had fewer than 10 students; of those, the average cost per student was about $45,000. Three of the five most expensive on a per-student basis were small schools in NSW, with each pupil costing more than $100,000 a year. The other two were larger schools in Western Australia.

This year, Louth Public has four students. Meg Sandford, 10, Roley Woodberry, 8, his brother Hughie, 6, and Declan Hardy, 5, are each in different grades. Meg is the town's only school-age girl; not long ago, Roley was the school's only boy.

Small and expensive to run it may be, but the school remains the centre point of the tiny community.

Principal Ian Hardy, whose son, Declan, is Louth's youngest student, is frank: "If the school wasn't here, the kids would either have to move somewhere else or do distance education," he said.

"When you are a young family and you move somewhere, one of the first things you do is look to see where the local school is."

Louth is 100km from the nearest town, Bourke, and 130km from Cobar; neither Bourke nor Cobar has a boarding school, and routes to both are exhausting dirt slaloms around flocks of emu, herds of goat and mobs of kangaroo, never mind the potholes.

The old school building, now a library, is a weatherboard structure replete with outback charm. Much of the teaching takes place in an air-conditioned classroom - built in 2009 under the federal government's Building the Education Revolution scheme - that would not look out of place in the grounds of a metropolitan school. Besides its two main buildings, the school has a covered outdoor learning area, an adult education centre, a veggie patch and a storage area, and perhaps the largest area of mown grass for kilometres around.

Preserving such a small, far-away institution might seem pointless or wasteful to some, but residents of Louth are convinced their school is vital.

"If there was no school, the kids would have to be taught at home," David Marett, publican and Louth resident of 17 years, said.

"It's hard to stay home and teach your kids, especially when mum and dad are out working on the property all day."

Mr Hardy and four other full or part-time staff keep the school running.

Robyn White, a teachers' aide and local resident of 12 years, says the children get a good education.

"They have to do exactly what the other schools do, and their curriculum is the same," Ms White said.

"They have more freedom; they can go outside, ride horses, go fishing or go out in the paddock with dad, whereas in town, apart from your yard, there's not a lot you can do."

Besides the standard basic subjects, Meg and Roley take piano lessons remotely with an instructor in Queensland and all four are learning Indonesian by phone. The class travels to join activity days with other schools and last year visited Canberra and the snow.

The biggest challenge, besides distance, is coping with the students' vast differences in age, Ms White said.

Mr Hardy said lessons were typically structured so all four students work on the same concept, at the same time, but at different levels. "A couple of weeks ago we were doing weather maps: the younger two drew maps of Australia, while the older two looked at synoptic charts."

Lessons are relaxed and personable, with an atmosphere more family room than classroom, although the students still call their teachers by their surnames.

The older two often help the younger ones and, from time to time, provide motivation.

Meg, whose best friend lives 100km away, says she enjoys the outdoors, but looks forward to joining her sister at boarding school at the end of next year.

"Sometimes I'm a bit lonely because I'm the only girl in town, but I like it because we have lots of animals and lots of space," she adds.