Alice Springs School of the Air operates for 40 weeks of the year the same as other schools in the Northern Territory. The school follows the same term and holiday schedule as other NT schools.

Many of the students live on cattle stations but they also come from Aboriginal communities, camel farms, national parks, mining camps, road houses, remote police stations and tourist ventures. Some students stay with the school for the whole 9 years of their primary education.

Class groups vary from 8 to 18 and total enrolment in the school averages around 120. Children can enrol in the Alice Springs School of the Air at age four and remain until the end of primary school, which makes them 12 or 13 years old. At that time parents must decide whether their children will continue with secondary education by correspondence from Darwin, or send their children to boarding school in Alice Springs or interstate.

The correspondence lessons are purchased from the Western Australia Schools of Isolated and Distance Education. The material for PreSchool is locally written. There is a teacher assigned to each grade and the same teacher who prepares and assesses the correspondence lessons conducts the IDL lessons and communicates when necessary by phone, fax and electronic mail. Video is also used to develop and provide support teaching materials for the students and home tutor. These teachers also go out to visit each student in their home at least once a year.

All the lesson materials are supplied by the school. The school supplies all the equipment required for students to access their education. In the past this has included transceivers (two way radios), a TV set, video recorder, cassette recorder and computers for students. Families pay a one off resource fee and a voluntary annual school fee. All other costs, including postage, are the responsibility of the school, which is funded by the Northern Territory Department of Education. An exception to this is overseas enrolments who are required to pay their own return postage.

IDL has now replaced radio broadcasts which were given directly from the school's studios using specially assigned frequencies to provide two way communication. This means broadcasts were planned at times most convenient for students, and that the radio was used for a wider range of activities other than just lessons. After school programs of special interest to students, such as Junior Rangers, were offered. The radio was also used for regular meetings of the School Council, Student Representative Council, Parents and Friends, Isolated Childrens' Parents Association, home tutors and full school assemblies. All such activities are now conducted using IDL.

Classes had a 20 - 30 minute radio lesson with their teacher three times a week. Students also had a ten minute personal lesson with their teacher once a week. Altogether, students would spend less than three hours on the radio each week.

Most students spend five to six hours a day, five days a week on a combination of correspondence material, IDL class lessons, online units and a range of extracurricular activities such as music, choir and Junior Rangers. All work must be supervised by an adult, usually a parent but sometimes by a home tutor hired by the family. IDL sessions are what you can see and hear during a visit to this school.

The old radio broadcast area for the Alice Springs School of the Air was over one million square kilometres and overlapped the borders of Western Australia and South Australia. There are far less restrictions with the IDL system the school currently uses.

Use of Alice Springs as the service centre influences a family's choice as to whether they access this school from another state.

The students are able to access telecommunications technologies such as phone, fax and the Internet. Electronic mail is a significant tool in distributing and receiving course work. Phones are used to make personal contact on a needs basis but at least once a week with students in years Preschool - Year 7.