School’s in, the work’s hard and hopes are sky high

Dannelle Campbell and her peers at Yirara College, Australia’s largest all-indigenous boarding school, are anything but ordinary.

Dannelle Campbell, back row, second from left, with friends at Yirara College. Picture: James Elsby

Dannelle Campbell dreams of ­becoming a Qantas flight attendant after she finishes school.

It’s not an unusual dream for a teenage girl, but Dannelle, 16, and her peers at Yirara College, Australia’s largest all-indigenous boarding school, are anything but ordinary.

Dannelle is from the remote ­indigenous community of Elliott, 770km north of her Alice Springs school, population 339, of whom 299 are indigenous.

The town camps on the edges of Elliott — home to the Gurungu and Wilyugu communities — have some of the worst living conditions in Australia.

Life at Yirara College, a gated private boarding school with lush lawns and well-maintained sports facilities including two swimming pools, is a world away from the red-dirt dysfunction of remote ­Aboriginal communities and their homelands.

The Weekend Australian was last week given unprecedented ­access to the college, which houses about 200 students from more than 40 remote communities across South Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland. Up to 25 language groups are represented.

The school was founded by the commonwealth in 1973 as an indigenous residential secondary school and since 1993 has been run by Finke River Mission, a ministry of the Lutheran Church, whose work dates to the first German ­Lutheran missionaries who ­arrived in Central Australia from Tanunda in South Australia’s Barossa Valley in 1877.

A recent school soccer trip to Sydney sparked Dannelle’s career dream.

“I like being on planes. I just flew back from Sydney for a school soccer trip and it gave me the dream to be a flight attendant,” the Year 10 student says.

Recess at Alice Springs’ Yirara College, home to 200 students from 40 remote communities representing up to 25 language groups. Picture: James Elsby

Outgoing principal Roger Ashcroft and Finke River Mission chairman Tim Stollznow say that without the opportunities provided to children such as Dannelle, such mainstream vocational ­ambition would not exist.

The school’s “pathways” team is already in contact with Qantas and working to help make Dannelle’s dream a reality.

Mr Stollznow is passionate about Yirara’s purpose. He grew up in the remote indigenous community of Papunya, 240km northwest of Alice Springs.

“Yirara is paid money by the commonwealth and territory governments to deliver a curriculum,” he says.

“We are not here to teach ­Aboriginal culture. Our role is to help these children function in our society and imagine a better world.

“The complexity of a traditional Aboriginal young person arriving in a 24/7 structured environment is challenging enough, but when coupled with other ­experiential, learning and psychological factors, it gets very complex.”

Several former Yirara students have worked on cattle stations, as trainee butchers, musicians, sportspeople, baggage handlers and translators.

Today’s students develop practical skills on campus through a barista course, guitar making and beauty therapy. They participate in Yirara’s own TV channel, studying media and communications. There are school-based apprenticeships and work-experience programs with the local hospital, Bunnings, McDonald’s, Kmart, Woolworths and Agrifoods.

Connections with Defence and NT emergency services are in train for cadetship programs, while Alice Springs Turf Club is working with the school to develop traineeships in trackwork.

Yirara Girls Academy co-ordinator Beverly Angeles runs ­electives including a “strong young women’s program” and counts Dannelle among her success stories. “We do a lot of social and emotional wellbeing stuff,” Ms Angeles says.

The road for students who go to Yirara is not an easy one.

While there have been a few success stories, many arrive at the college traumatised and homesick, some with sexually transmitted diseases and levels of foetal alcohol syndrome. They require intensive help to stay there, let alone engage with the curriculum that must be taught.

Music teacher Tim Cox helps Reece Raymond make a guitar. Picture: James Elsby

Most of the students speak ­English as a second or third language, increasing the challenge for the more than 90 staff employed by the school.

Yet NAPLAN results show there have been improvements on average of up to 59 per cent in reading over the past two years, 46 per cent in grammar, 42 per cent in numeracy, 43 per cent in writing and 12 per cent in spelling. There are counsellors, a fully equipped and staffed medical clinic, and a specialist psychologist from Adelaide who attends every term to assess students.

There are domestic violence workshops in Year 9 and Headspace workshops in Years 7 and 8 focused on mental health, homesickness, grief, loss and anger.

Families do not pay school fees. The estimated $60,000 cost per student is met through a complex federal and Territory funding model. Any indigenous student who wants to attend is accepted, but there are no day students.

Then there is the ideological debate about predominantly white modern-day missionaries collecting Aboriginal children from indigenous communities, ­essentially to raise them in a religious educational setting. Chapel is held at 8.30am four days a week, led by enthusiastic Lutheran pastor Basil Schild, complete with a choir singing Amazing Grace in traditional language.

Yirara takes into account cultural issues — including totems, kinship, initiation and shame — and works to deal with the complexities of a melting pot of different clan groups. Aside from some classroom activities, students are strictly segregated by gender, due to cultural reasons, and live a structured life on campus.

After chapel, mornings are spent in classrooms for lessons in literacy, science, maths, language and Christian studies, conducted in English. Afternoons are given over to electives and sport.

Year 9 teacher Molly O’Brien, 30, arrived at the school from Pennsylvania in the US two years ago via an international volunteer program. She was unprepared for the complexities of indigenous education.

“It is completely different, unlike anything I’d ever experienced before,” Ms O’Brien says. “The kids have all the typical teenage ­issues plus everything else they bring with them from living far away from home ... and they are trying to figure out how they fit in to all that plus the mainstream ­aspects of Australian life we are trying to teach them.”

Mr Stollznow stresses that the children are at the school because their families want them there, often because of bad influences at home but also to provide a consistent education and develop an ability to “live in both worlds”.

“There is no compulsion for them to attend Yirara,” he says.

The college is demanding ­urgent reforms to Abstudy as it seeks to recover more than $400,000 annually from the federal government. In a complaint being considered by Commonwealth Ombudsman Michael Manthorpe, the school says it is struggling with excessive delays and deficits around travel costs.

The college has largely given up on what it says is an ineffective government program and instead sends staff and its own transport to collect children from remote communities. It maintains six specialist vehicles for this purpose.

Former student Curt Abbott has returned to Yirara as a house parent to supervise and mentor “fellas” in a boarding house on campus. “I remember what it was like when I first arrived — really confronting — and you are homesick, but it helps me relate better,” he says.