Distance Education Centre, Victoria, or DECv is a school located in Thornbury

Thornbury, Victoria

Thornbury originalSince the 1960s, the vast majority of Melburnians pronounce the name phonetically. The 'h' is no longer silent, and there is more stress placed upon the 'o'. pronunciation is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 7 km north from Melbourne's central business district....

, Victoria

Victoria (Australia)

Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....

, in Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

's north.

Students

The school caters for a wide variety of students, for the following reasons:

For the P-6 Subschool:

• Distance — Students who live too far from a mainstream school
• Medical — Students who, for medical reasons, are unable to attend a mainstream school
• School Referral — Students who have been referred to DECv by their current school principal, for various reasons
• Traveller — Students who are permanently travelling.

For the 7-12 Subschool:

• Distance — as noted above
• Medical — as noted above
• School Referral — as noted above
• Traveller — as noted above
• Student in regular school — For students who wish to study a subject not currently provided by their current school.
• Adults — For students over the age of 18, who for various reasons, cannot attend University
  University
  A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
  
  , TAFE etc.
• Overseas students — For students who live overseas, but frequently travel to Australia, or wish to study a subject not currently provided by their current school.

The school

The school is based in Thornbury, Victoria. It shares a building with the Victorian School of Languages. DECV students have an opportunity to learn a foreign language through the VSL if they wish.
The school is split into 3 subsections:

• The P-6 Subschool, which handles students from Prep to Year 6,
• The 7-10 Subschool, which handles students from Year 7 to Year 10,
• The 11/12 Subschool, which handles students from Years 11 and 12 (doing VCE and other senior school courses).

Work

The school work is sent to the enrolled student per term in advance in book/paper form, and the student tears out each week from the book, and posts it into the school, for the teachers to mark, correct, and send back with comments.The school is involved in a teaching program. The school work is also available on a Course CD, which is a CD-Rom, based on a Macromedia Flash application, and includes Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...

files with each week's work, images, links, software and other educational-based tools. The course CD is a very popular alternative to the books.

The school work is also available on the school's website, via a Janison-type system. These virtual school books are called "Modules".