ABSTRACT
In the nineteenth century distance education was developed primarily for commercial or altruistic reasons to provide alternative access to formal education and training. More underdevelopment theorists have come to question the connection between modernisation and the attainment of high-income status. Experience shows the critical importance of political leadership in establishing large scale distance education institutions. Commercial correspondence schools have usually begun as small businesses, although some of them have developed into sizeable enterprises. In addition many conventional educational institutions have established departments to teach students at a distance. The successful early development of correspondence tuition made it certain that sooner or later distance education would be adopted as an instrument of state education policy. In Australia and subsequently in Canada and New Zealand correspondence education was adopted by national or state governments as a means of extending the school system to those who would otherwise be deprived.
