The Murri School: The results

Ownership: The school as a place the students like to be
Cultural inclusivity
Literacy
Attendance
Teacher commitment

The Kulkathil website outlines some of the achievements of The Murri School as follows.

The school has been widely recognised for its successes in literacy and numeracy education with primary age students and is now extending its expertise into the secondary and adult education fields, and also developing congruent and 'bridging' training strategies to more ably and fully serve communities. This can be seen in its successful implementation of the Department of Employment, Training and Industrial Relations Community Literacy Program on campus over the past two years.

The school enjoys an extremely high reputation among educators, funding agencies and the various Indigenous communities it serves.
It also enjoys a national reputation for excellence in Indigenous education.
(Extract courtesy of the Kulkathil Skills Centre.)

Ownership: The school as a place the students like to be

A point that was emphasised many times in discussion was:

It's an ownership thing. It comes back to ownership. That's what it is.

There is a very real sense that within the environment of this school the Murri Community is taking control of its own destiny. The students feel like they belong here. The school provides a welcoming environment for the students. On a Monday the principal was able to say:

I was here yesterday (Sunday) and there was more than a half a dozen children here. Once they know the school is accessible the children are here. Likewise in the holidays — there's always at least 15 to 20 kids here during the holiday period. It is a place the children like to be.

Cultural inclusivity

Related to the sense of belonging is the attention to cultural inclusivity. According to Tiga Bayles it can be a daunting task for Indigenous children just to walk into a school and talk to a teacher or the principal because they are nearly always a part of a minority group. At the Murri school this is not the case. James William, himself a graduate of the school before becoming Director of the Kulkathil Centre summed it up:

The school takes the view, and this is reflected particularly with the enrolment of non-Indigenous students in the school, that no child attending the school feels under threat because of coming from a different cultural background.

The most important thing that the school enforces is that no child has to feel that their culture is under threat once they walk into this community environment. They don't feel threatened at all. They are just children and they're here to learn and to feel safe and to enjoy their time.

Literacy

The performance of the students in the Queensland literacy tests at Years 3, 5 and 7 has been excellent.

At Year 3, the students at the Murri School performed above the state average for mainstream students. At Years 5 and 7 the students performed above the average for Indigenous students in these groups.

Good as these results are, the principal was adamant that the statistics did not do justice to the very real improvements in learning outcomes of the students.

She argued that there should be two separate sets of data. The first should reflect the learning outcomes of those students who had had uninterrupted schooling, and therefore reflected the 'norm' for the age cohort at the school, and the second to account for those students who for one reason or another have fallen significantly behind where they should be for their age.

Attendance

Latest figures indicate that the attendance rate is about 90 percent, significantly above the average attendance rate for Indigenous students.

Teacher commitment

There is a sense of commitment and ownership among staff as well, but extra demands on time and effort can mean many personal sacrifices. This was exemplified by the principal who indicated that it was not unusual to be taking school-related courses at home at 11.00 pm. It is clear that this is more than just a job.