Inside Warakirri College, Sydney school for at risk students

Welcome to the Sydney school for kids who are in danger of falling through the cracks and young adults who already have.

It is the school for Sydney kids who are in danger of falling through the cracks and young adults who already have.

Some students are just 17 and already have a baby. One teen has been suspended from his former public school almost a hundred times and expelled three times. Many students have done time in juvenile detention.

Welcome to Warakirri College — an alternative school which has seen enrolments surge by more than 200 per cent with more than 300 students across three campuses in Western Sydney.

At one campus at Fairfield, the building appears more like an office rather than a school where students aged 14 to 22 get one last chance at finishing Year 10 or 12 so they have a shot at getting a job or doing further study.

There are no uniforms, no bells, small classes and a counsellor on hand to help children with their mental health struggles.

Students Jasmyne Bates, 19, and Aries Rao-Bates, 3 months, Xanadu Sales, 21, Joshua Harding, 17, and Fatima Al Nuaimy, 23, with Razan Wahab, 11 Months, at Warakirri College. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

For 19-year-old mum Jasmyne Bates, it is her second time at the school and hopefully her last so she can get an HSC so she might be able to one day study law at university.

Cradling her baby when The Daily Telegraph visited the school this week — it was a very different look to seven years beforehand when she attended an all girls school in Liverpool and loved doing maths before the bullying started.

“Because I had my blonde hair and it was really long and I didn’t wear makeup at all and I had glasses, they used to call me a nerd,” she said.

The bullying intensified and with the death of her stepfather, she developed anxiety and depression and began hanging out with the wrong crowd, ran away from home and spent time living in a refuge.

“After (he died) I just started rebelling. I wasn’t listening to my parents. I would run away from home. I was a very stupid, naive child,” she said.

“I became the girl who thought I could get away with anything … I actually had a pocket knife and pulled the pocket knife out on this girl, and she called the police on me saying I tried to stab her,” she said.

Locked in the cells at Liverpool Police Station, she had time to reflect on her choices.

“It was very cold. I was angry at myself,” she said.

With the birth of her baby Aries three months ago, Ms Bates had an epiphany that she was wasting her life.

“It was a massive wake up call, especially being so financially unstable at that point made me realise I need to wake up to myself,” she said.

Being at the school at the age of 19 when most students are in first or second year university was initially a struggle — but having small classes with teachers who understand her mental health needs is a big help.

The students don’t wear uniforms and breakfast, lunch and snacks are provided.. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

Alongside Ms Bates there are students like Joshua Harding, 17, who is on track to complete his HSC this year. He was left the public system because he bullied from the earliest days of primary school and called nicknames because of scarring caused by four operations due to a birth defect including a skull reconstruction.

“I got severely bullied for my whole life … I am not small, I used to be called a lot of names,” he said.

But that all changed when he set foot at Warakirri

“We’re all in a similar boat. It is not the same boat, but everyone has a similar story,” he said.

The school is booming in popularity and now has three campuses at Blacktown, Fairfield and Campbelltown while construction will start on another campus there next week.

Most students are disconnected from mainstream schools due to personal challenges,

complex family situations, early parenthood, interface with Juvenile Justice system, refugee experiences, and difficulty getting along with their peers. For others, public schools refuse to take them.

That includes 17-year-old Luke Mellen who finished Year 10 last year at the school.

He now has a four-month-old baby and tried to get into school after being expelled three times.

When he applied, the principals of the south western Sydney schools would print out his discipline file from his previous public high schools and deny him a place.

“I’m not proud of it, it is everything I’ve done wrong, I have almost 100 suspensions and three expulsions.”

“I understand that, because when I got told that other kids in their school they had trouble with now, adding one more person to that list would just make it harder for them than it already is.”

Carolyn Blanden, principal at Warakirri College in Fairfield,. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

And how many schools did he get rejected from? “Quite a few, too many to count.”

Principal Carolyn Blanden said: “Every student deserves an education, we have students who have been knocked back from every school they know,” she said.

“Kids will come thinking they can’t make friends and they do, or they find they’re cleverer than they think they are.”

“We try to be a place where they can be part of a family and be loved and just like coming to school and have a chance to succeed where often they think they can’t.”