Did you grow up in the country and attend a one or two-teacher school? By the early 1960s there were still about 4,500 one-teacher schools around Australia, considerably outnumbering regular schools. 

They usually had one room with around 10 to 30 children distributed over the infants and primary grades. Teachers had to be highly organised and apparently received special training for teaching in such a school.

For the children attending them, small country schools often provided a family atmosphere as students usually received more individual attention. Initiative was encouraged and co-operation necessary. Some of the schools developed impressive gardens tended by the pupils, whilst others were involved with the Young Farmers' Club movement. A friend of mine eloquently recalled her days attending a one-teacher school:

“Nineteen of us lined up every morning outside the single-room yellow weatherboard building to ‘Honour my God, serve my Queen and salute my flag’. Then we’d march inside. Two of the older children raised and lowered the flag on the flagpole each day.

Our school stood surrounded by wattles, casuarinas and eucalyptus trees, in the middle of a paddock. A three-sided corrugated iron ‘weather shed’ on the back fence provided shelter and a place to eat lunch in summer and winter. Two wooden long-drop toilets, one for boys and one for girls, were the stuff of nightmares for small children who feared falling in or encountering snakes. The playground was rough dirt but the entire school happily played games of rounders and British Bulldog and there was a horse paddock for children who wanted to ride to school.”

Better roads, bus services to convey children to centrally-located schools in towns, greater educational expectations and the population drift from rural to urban areas, all worked against the continued operation of small schools. Some still survive, converted into private homes.