Our School
Established in 1979, ACS Distance Education has educated thousands of full and part-time students, many of whom have gone onto successful employment, both in industry or in their own businesses. Others have used their courses to develop a hobby, or simply broaden their general education.
We service over 3000 students enrolled directly with ACS, but also maintain a network of partner colleges around the world who licence our courses and deliver them to a further 50,000 students across most countries across the world.
ACS employs around 45 staff most located in the UK and Australia.
Our courses are unique, built around the ideas of experiential learning and problem based learning (Unlike competency based training used elsewhere, we emphasise learning more and assessment less).
Courses and service have a truly global focus.
Courses have been developed with strong industry input from around the world and are continually updated on the basis of surveys undertaken by both current students and graduates every month of the year.
The school holds high the ideals of practical education, emphasising in all courses those things which are relevant to "real life". Courses offered cater for hobby interest through to formal training in industry and the professions.
The school has also been active in the publishing industry for over two decades, partnering several different print media publishers to produce a variety of books and magazines. In 2010, ACS set up it's own eBook publishing arm. Ebooks published by the school can be seen in our bookshop at
www.acsebook.com OUR HISTORY
We started life as Australian Horticultural Correspondence Schools with an advertisement in Australia's Your Garden Magazine, in August 1979. One course was offered (Horticulture I), and thirty seven enrolments resulted from this first advertisement.
The school was established by John Mason, a graduate of Burnley Horticultural College who had after a career as a Parks Director, been involved lecturing horticulture and related subjects at several Melbourne colleges, including Burnley. In late 1978 he became aware that large numbers of applicants were being turned away from Burnley each year. There simply were insufficient places available for the number of people wanting to study horticulture. The answer seemed obvious. Develop distance education courses. At first John tried to secure support from the government. The college principal was very supportive; but as is often the case; bureaucracy and lack of funding made progress difficult. By mid 1999, John decided to simply write a course, and with help from a colleague who had marketing experience with CAE (Council of Adult Education); a plan was born.
Throughout the 1980's the range of courses grew; as did the staff and scope of operation. By the mid 1980's students from over 25 countries were enrolled with the school, and the percentage of overseas students was growing every year.
In 1985 we opened a retail shop which operated for 18 months. With the school continuing to grow much faster than the shop, we exited retailing (except for mail order books) in 1986.
Around this time, ACS also formed a horticultural marketing business called Let's Grow, in partnership with garden media personalities Glen Heyne in Melbourne; and Graham and Sandra Ross in Sydney.
In 1987 we started to exhibit more extensively at garden shows, farm field days and other exhibitions. We also began organising exhibitions and providing consulting services to exhibition companies.
From 1988 for 5 years, ACS contracted to organise a Garden Show as part of the Royal Melbourne Show for the Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria. Apart from teaching; ACS has also always been involved in publishing.
The 1990s
Responding to growing demand from Northern Australia and beyond, we established a second office on the Gold Coast in 1991.
Following the Australian government’s 1992 policy revision allowing private colleges formal recognition as Registered Training Organisations (RTOs), we became one of the first private colleges in the country to become an RTO.
The internet’s arrival saw major changes for the school. In 1994, we were one of the first colleges to put significant resources into developing websites and an online training system. This
growing digital presence built an international profile that attracted global partnerships – the Bermuda government purchased our Certificate in Horticulture for national training, while one of the United States’ largest mail order plant nurseries Pacifica purchased the same certificate and began teaching this programme from their new 400-acre botanic gardens in Oregon.
We sought various accreditations throughout the 90s, believing they would benefit our students.
By the late 90s, most courses had formal accreditation, however by this stage, bureaucracy and costs associated with accreditation had blown out exponentially. An internal audit revealed that accreditations were accounting for 25% of our total operational costs, while a survey showed they delivered no meaningful benefits—no increase in enrolments, no tangible advantages
for students or graduates.
Dawning on the new millennium, we had developed 242 courses delivered through both traditional paper-based materials and our online training system. Spanning diverse fields: 110 in horticulture, 29 in agriculture, 10 in environment and wildlife, 7 in hospitality and tourism, 27 in health and leisure, 5 in psychology, 18 in science and tech, 17 in business and management, and 19 other specialized courses.
By the decade’s close, we had broadened our range so significantly that we registered a new business name to better reflect our diverse range—Australian Correspondence Schools.
The 2000s
Starting the new millennium, we were commissioned by Express Publications to write monthly magazines under the “Your Backyard” banner. The magazines became bestsellers in newsagents across Australia and beyond.
After four successful years, we concluded this partnership to focus on our expanding business. Simultaneously, we were contracted to write books covering agriculture, fitness, management, and horticulture for Landlinks Press (CSIRO’s publishing division) and Kangaroo Press (Simon & Schuster).
Having now had time to ruminate over our accreditation findings, we chose the ethical road out—departing the RTO system and redirecting those savings towards what actually mattered:
better course materials and enhanced student support, rather than forcing students to bear the
cost of bureaucracy that wasn’t serving them.
2002 brought international expansion with the opening of a UK office and sister school. This new location offered the complete course lineup with local tutors and dedicated student support,
providing enhanced service to students across the UK, Europe, and the northern hemisphere.
With the Gold Coast office now our primary Australian hub, we closed the physical Melbourne location while retaining all Melbourne staff as remote workers—an arrangement that
continues today.
Around the same time, Mike Pollock, then head of horticultural education at the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) in London, encouraged us to develop and deliver the prestigious RHS General
Certificate. We agreed to offer the course globally, with the RHS facilitating supervised exams at accessible locations. This success led to additional RHS courses being developed to complement their curriculum—an arrangement that continued for 15 years.
The following year, our founder John L. Mason was a keynote speaker at an education summit held by the International Society for Horticultural Science, with attendees from various international colleges and universities. This led to our introduction to problem-based learning (PBL), a proven teaching method developed in U.S. medical schools and adapted by Vancouver University’s horticulture department. Vancouver University graciously shared their PBL documentation with us, which our staff honed into a comprehensive approach for curriculum delivery.
Come 2005, the school had expanded significantly, warranting another name change to ACS Distance Education—the name we carry today.
The decade concluded with 326 X 100 hour courses developed, and most students now choosing to study online.
The 2010s
By the early 2010s, affiliated colleges were delivering ACS courses under license from 6 home countries, combining a cohort of around 8,000 new students each year, across more than
150 countries.
In 2013, we moved away from hard copy textbooks to eBooks for our students. Rising costs and weakening supply chains made physical books increasingly impractical in the digital age. This
shift proved productive—we wrote and published over 100 eBooks throughout the decade.
We were approached by the former CFO of Express Publications to write a new monthly magazine called “Home Grown.” From 2014 to 2017, we produced this publication, which like “Your
Backyard”, became a bestseller.
In 2014, micro-credentials were emerging and we could see the demand building. We developed a 20-hour course format to meet this growing interest, and it worked—by late 2019, we’d created
45 of these 20-hour courses.
During this period, our IT department completed a greenfield project, building a new LMS (Learning
Management System) from scratch. This transformed us into a one-stop shop, offering
affiliated colleges a complete white-label solution that included both our courses and LMS.
2020-Present
This decade was largely defined by the global COVID-19 pandemic, which reshaped the entire educational landscape. Universities and colleges closed their doors and rushed to implement
alternative learning pathways, creating rapid growth in demand for distance and online learning options. Our student and affiliate numbers multiplied quickly as a result. Four decades of refining our education model prepared us to scale smoothly with the surge, then read just as conditions settled. While others struggled with the transition, we survived while many providers
fell away.
As of 2024, our founder John L. Mason shifted from operational leadership to focus on educational development and partnership building. Nicholas L. Mason, his youngest son,
shaped by nearly ten years in the business, has since taken the helm.
Spurred on by conversations had with industry colleagues and employment services, we developed a third course type—a hybrid model that blends our traditional courses with our shortcourse
format, designed to address knowledge gaps within a tangible 1-2 day program.
By mid-2025, we had developed over 600- X 100 hour courses across multiple disciplines. These modules can function as standalone educational programs, or be strategically combined in various configurations to create qualifications, from entry level through to advanced certificate level and beyond.
