ACS has been developing resources and guiding students since 1979.

We have developed over 600 online courses / distance education courses from short 100 hour courses to Advanced Certificate courses online. Along with our main courses our staff have developed and written all of our eBooks and a variety of highly interactive short 20 hour self-paced courses used more for professional development or short snippets of learning in an area of interest.

We continue to improve existing courses and develop new ones on a regular basis.

ACS is an Internationally Recognized College affiliated with over 18 other post secondary institutions in several different countries, including both government owned and nationally recognized institutions.

We approach learning as a journey but often others don't.  To educate our students we must appreciate the complex journey that needs to be undertaken in order to achieve useful learning.
Many people (even in the education industry) treat learning superficially, as something simple (eg.  you enrol, do a course, get tested, graduate.; but this is not real learning).

In reality, learning is a pathway that the student moves along. It begins with a first encounter, and continues to develop and strengthen not only during the initial course, but long afterwards – and different people move at different speeds along their learning pathway.
The quality of education has all too often been degraded because of an unsophisticated understanding of how learning occurs, combined with restraints of curriculum, bureaucracy, and limited funding.

Our courses are practical, enabling you to not only develop knowledge, but to build the capacity to continue learning after your studies are completed.

Our courses are experiential; you learn from "'experts'" by being guided to see, do, think about and experience the things you study.

• INDUSTRY LEADERS -   ACS has been leading the way in correspondence since 1979 and online education since 2005.  We are the INDUSTRY LEADERS in supplying high end course content.  So much so that many of the courses available online are actually our licensed course content. 
  
  
• CHOOSE YOUR METHOD OF STUDY -  Study online through our specially designed and easy to use online learning system or through receiving a hard copy of your course*.
  
  
• SO MANY COURSES TO CHOOSE FROM -  We have one of the largest varieties of course disciplines and subjects available to study online.
  
  
• SELF PACED STUDY -    Fit study into your life not your life into your study needs!
  
  
• INNOVATIVE & UNIQUE LEARNING METHODS -  including our version of Problem Based Learning are innovations based upon R&D conducted in house by our staff , then built into our courses to strengthen the learning experience.  Not only what you learn is unique to ACS, but also how you learn.
  
  
• ORIGINAL COURSE CONTENT DEVELOPERS - We develop our own courses and all course content in house. Written by our esteemed academic staff who have real life experience in each of the subjects they write.
  
  
• UP TO DATE CONTENT -  Our courses are continually updated –so you’ll never get stale or old content.
  
  
• OUTSTANDING STUDENT SUPPORT -  Our student support is second to none, we always put students first and assist and respond as soon as possible so you can continue your learning journey!
  
  

ACS was established by John Mason author of over 130 books, magazine editor, publisher, parks director, university and college lecturer : recipient of fellowships from IOH (UK), AIH and PLA (Australia).ACS started its beginnings 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.

Since then ACS has grown to have over 600 courses of varying levels and disciplines, developed and maintain our own state of the art online training system for our students and our learning partners (Affiliates) to use, have developed high quality eBooks and then more recently short 20 hour courses for professional development or personal interest .