School's in … Parkville College teacher Anne-Maree Fenech. Credit:Thom Rigney "Hey, show some respect!" responded a kid who was certainly not pale and certainly not skinny. The first student raised both palms in mock retreat. "Oh, sorry, sorry ... you black pig." "The boy stood up and he was just a giant." Murray remembers. "Then he started swinging. I put my hand on the first kid to keep him at distance - and believe me, he certainly didn't want any of Big Boy - but the punches flew. Eventually, youth officers won the battle to restrain him. But, yeah, that was our second minute of operation." At Parkville, it's called a "Code Black" - a critical incident in which a literal panic button is hit and a Safety Emergency Response Team (SERT) descends to secure the room.

School of hard knocks … Ian Lanyon, Director of Secure Services for The Precinct. Credit:Thom Rigney "The big kid was distressed," Murray says. "Through the tears I remember him saying, 'I'm so sorry. It's just you guys have been really good, and he shouldn't say things like that. He shouldn't say things like that because 'Miss' is black.'" After SERT had cleared the classroom and the boys had returned to their residential compounds, known as units, Murray delivered another three-quarter-time address. "We talked about respect. I said that North Remand had a reputation as the toughest unit in the state, and that a young woman who could have taught at any school she wanted had chosen to teach here. 'She wants to teach,' I told them. 'Do you guys want to be taught?' " The boys returned to the school building within the Remand Centre, Parkville College's principal base. "They were perfect," Appeldorff says, grinning. "I've now taught North Remand for four terms, and there hasn't been another incident like it." It was Jess Appeldorff's first day as a teacher.

Campus co-ordinator Matthew Hyde, 28, meets me after I have had my retina photographed, but before I've entered the sci-fi-style, whooshing glass Tardis gateway to The Precinct. "Eye scans, emptying pockets, no phones, wearing an alarm buzzer that means you've got a little SWAT team at your disposal," says Hyde as he ushers me through. "That's all a bit different to what I experienced at Lalor West Primary." We walk back outside, except now we are "inside". Isolated buildings punctuate a landscape of straggly grass and white concrete. To our left is the Remand Centre. Behind us are towering 15-metre walls topped with razor wire. A dusty football oval nestles between the Remand Centre and the units for those who have been sentenced, small enough for a decent full-back to consider having a shot. It's a serious landscape containing up to 123 kids who have been charged with or convicted of serious crimes such as armed robbery, rape and assault. All nine of the residential units at The Precinct are now part of Parkville College. "Most of our kids are way behind," says Hyde. "They've been geniuses at getting kicked out of class. Whether it's telling a teacher to go and get f...ed, or flipping a table, they got themselves out quick, so they're missing the fundamentals."

We walk down to Southbank unit, a brick bungalow where Hyde teaches a numeracy class that ends with "tables bingo" for Freddo Frogs. The boys have times-tables sheets in front of them, as well as bingo cards. The circle of desks is abuzz. "Three times three?" Hyde rattles. "Nine!" "Four times eight?" "Thirty-two!"

"Two times three?" "I don't f...ing know!" shoots one kid. "Six!" scream the rest. The game is derailed when Jesse* is caught pinching chocolates but gets back on track for Abdul's climactic "bingo". Hyde tosses him two Freddos, which are unwrapped and devoured in a single motion. "Lucky c...sucking c...," says one of the vanquished, but with good-natured humour. Then he remembers me. "Sorry, I didn't see you there when I called him a c...sucking c... ."

At 19, Brendan Murray was a promising AFL footballer. In 1991 he won the Collingwood Under-19s best and fairest, and was elevated to the senior list. He started 1992 well and was even selected as an emergency for the seniors. But emotionally, Murray was treading tough terrain. A few years earlier, his father had committed suicide from the platform at Victoria Park railway station. The young footballer continued to train at the adjacent ground, listening to trains rattle by. "I woke up one day and just decided to quit," Murray remembers. He called the club and was summoned for a coffee with senior coach Leigh Matthews. "Leigh asked what was wrong and I replied, 'I don't know. I just don't want to spend every day chasing a ball around.' " Matthews suggested that Murray might be depressed. "I said maybe I was. I do remember saying, 'Why do we always do 10 push-ups, never nine?' " Murray laughs. "That's about the time Leigh was ready to cut me loose." Post-footy, Murray landed a job at Anglicare as a residential carer, living with boys leaving youth detention. Repeatedly, he saw how difficult it was to reintegrate youth offenders into the community. "If a kid has been expelled from multiple schools, the next school just says, 'No thanks.' So the kid hits the streets and reoffends. It was so depressing. It led me to believe that what we were offering was a band-aid - that the only way to break the cycle was education." In 2000, Murray enrolled at Monash University to become a teacher.

"He who opens a school door, closes a prison." Victor Hugo's words are written on the school door in the Remand Centre and repeated again in a street-arty font in the grimly lit internal corridor. Eight youths, half of North Remand, wander past into class and, despite the transitory nature of the unit's population, Murray impresses with his ability to greet them all by name. The last kid Murray greets is Axel, a flat-nosed 15-year-old who's gripping a book to his chest. The boy proudly displays the cover. It's an AFL autobiography, Shane Crawford's That's What I'm Talking About. Murray digs for a review. "Liking it?" Axel flicks the pages. "I've read this much. It's f...ing awesome!" Murray offers congratulations. I quickly learn that casual swearing is commonplace, and will be overlooked unless used directly against a teacher or classmate.

"Check out these guns," teacher Anne-Maree Fenech says, flexing her biceps. The North Remand boys sit up straighter in their seats. From the look of some of them, bicep size is more than a passing interest. They hadn't expected this from a slightly built, 160-centimetre, 23-year-old woman. "Do you reckon I'd be able to bench press 200 pounds?" Fenech poses, still in the flex position. "Noooo!" the boys laugh. "Nowhere near!" "What about 180?" "Not a chance!" comes the immediate reply. The boys know their bench-press times tables.

Fenech holds up a fat novel. "So, who reckons he could finish a 300-page book?" Another "Noooo". "Well, who reckons he could read two pages?" Parkville College's newest arrivals tentatively agree that they could. "That's how we'll start. Then we'll build up, just like at the gym. And I'll bet you do end up finishing 300 pages. And more."

Most classes begin with silent reading. For those starting out, the aim might be five minutes. For those with some "fitness", it might be 45. Bringing a book to class is non-negotiable. New Yorker Maddie Witter, 33, is behind the school's reading policy. She co-founded New York's KIPP Infinity School, an institution of last resort for dragging kids out of poverty, and authored the recently released Reading without Limits. In 2011, prompted by a visit to KIPP Infinity School in 2009, Murray convinced her to move to Australia as literacy consultant to his proposed new school. It was Witter, alongside Murray, who pitched Parkville College to the Victorian state government. "We test kids diagnostically to work out how well they can read," says Witter, "and then apply strategies to help them improve. We provide cultivated classroom libraries, with the emphasis on sequels and series, because kids sometimes find it hard to 'break up' with characters." In this classroom library, I see Deltora Quest, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Moneyball and Stephen King's It. "We're matching kids to books they can read confidently," Witter explains. Murray says the techniques are working. "We had one boy who'd never read a book and rose three years of reading levels in five months. Yes, they're starting from a low base, but we're getting huge and rapid improvements." He walks me across to the Eastern Hill unit. When we reach the makeshift classroom, we prop outside: "In this room at the moment we've got two boys who have committed armed robbery, one who's raped and one who's murdered," Murray says. We enter into the deep silence and attract only the briefest of glances before eyes descend back into books. Strikingly, the two youth officers assigned to the unit are also reading. They are in uniform, belts heavy with security equipment, legs outstretched. Murray is organising for their enrolment in a teachers' aide course at Monash University.

Ian Lanyon, 40, the Director of Secure Services for The Precinct, has witnessed the transformation in his staff: "On day one, they were standing around the edge of the classroom with arms crossed, going, 'This won't work. Things will turn to crap pretty quickly.' Now they're helping kids with school work. Some of them want to become teachers!" Lanyon laughs. "I'm upset with Brendan because he's pinching my staff!" I attend a cooking class in the Southbank unit, and watch as Hyde incorporates maths and measures into the task of preparing rissoles. "Cooking's massive," he explains. "Not only do the boys love it, but so many of them already have kids of their own. And sadly, our kids aren't well trained in providing healthy food." In Southbank's common area, Abdul, a garrulous 16-year-old with multiple tattoos, shows me his reading list: Puppies behind Bars, Bear Grylls's Mud, Sweat and Tears, graffiti artist Banksy's Wall and Piece. "I've read heaps more, too. I got nothing but positives to say for the school. I mean, I've always been pretty smart. In school I'd finish first, disrupt others, then get sent out of the classroom or put in isolation. But in here, classes are smaller. It's one on one and I'm going to achieve my VCAL [Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning]." Other students are a long way from achieving a leaving certificate. Jesse, 16, is away from the group in an open, supervised bathroom, shaving ahead of a court appearance. "He often doesn't join in with the boys," Hyde explains. "He's got a developmental age of about six or seven, just really battles in the classroom, and so Brendan and I do one-on-one sessions with him." Murray later recalls spending several weeks reading Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Jesse. "He just lay back on a couch and closed his eyes. He loved it. Told us that nobody had ever read to him before."

I ask Murray what Jesse is in for. "Armed robbery," he says. "His mates convinced him to hold a knife to a guy in a 7-Eleven. When he got before the magistrate she gave him five months. Jesse said, 'Get f...ed.' She said, 'Six months.' Jesse said, 'Get f...ed.' They both eventually stopped at 15 months." Murray was the Victorian Education Department's Secondary Teacher of the Year in 2009. The award was acknowledgement for co-founding the Pavilion School, a facility of last resort for kids not receiving education in Melbourne's north. To commence classes in 2006, Murray and his co-founder Josie Howie, the school's current principal, had to find 20 students in 20 days. Recalls Murray, "We just went up to kids we saw hanging around and said, 'Hi, we're starting up a new school. When was the last time you went to school?' " Seven years later, the Pavilion School has 185 students across two campuses. Howie, a social worker, and Murray, a teacher, were a winning combination. Both are passionate believers in "unconditional positive regard", a term coined in the 1950s by psychologist Carl Rogers which stipulates basic support for a person, regardless of what that person says or does. "It's about creating a therapeutic environment," says Howie. "If someone comes into a therapy session, you don't berate them. You try to understand them, within certain boundaries. That's how you can work with people who are sex offenders, or who are violent or aggressive." Murray explains further: "In practical terms, it means not giving these kids what they expect from an adult every time they upturn a table, or abuse a teacher, or ride a motorcycle into class. It means rolling with resistance. It means grabbing hold of the one thing that student might be doing well, and highlighting it. There are boundaries and consequences, but whatever the kid does, she doesn't lose the teacher. She doesn't get what she expects. There's always a tomorrow."

It was following up on a Pavilion School student that inspired Murray to embark upon Parkville College. "We had Jack, a Maori kid who had finished year 11 but left school to work in the same factory as his parents. About three months later, friends of his told me he'd been locked up." This was indeed the case. Since Jack had left the Pavilion School, a family member had died, and life had spun out of control. Murray called The Precinct and requested permission to visit. "When we asked him about school, Jack replied, 'Somebody visits about half an hour a week.' When we asked what he was learning, he said, 'Nothing.' This kid was up on serious charges, did five months on remand, and was receiving no education at all. It had a huge impact on me, so in the middle of 2011 I picked up the phone to the Minister." Murray could not have made his call at a more opportune time. A scathing Victorian state Ombudsman's report from October 2010 into conditions at Parkville had made similar observations. On average, four detainees were attending each session of TAFE offered and witnesses reported that teaching staff "couldn't be bothered" and would just "sit for 12 hours and go home". A month after the Ombudsmen's report came out, a new Liberal state government was elected. The incoming Community Services Minister, Mary Wooldridge, moved swiftly to change things at Parkville, appointing ex-policeman Lanyon for the top job. Immediately, Lanyon had a raft of Ombudsman's recommendations to worry about, one of which was a new educational model. "We worked out that while TAFE can provide a good vocational service, it was too advanced," Lanyon explains. "Where our clients are deficient is basic literacy and numeracy, but even more they lack interpersonal skills, the skills we learn in prep, kindy and grade one - how to talk to someone, how to relate to an adult, how to sit there and not punch each other, all that stuff."

An image that has stayed with Lanyon is watching a group of detainees attempt to butter bread. "They couldn't do it. Not because they were physically disabled but because nobody had shown them how. It saddened me to the core, one of those moments where you think, 'This can't just be about teaching kids to drive a forklift or balance tyres. We have to get back to basics.' " In her break between classes, teacher Alyce Cleary approaches me in the corridor, holding a pen. "Is this yours?" she asks. I can tell from her tone that this isn't a casual inquiry and I shamefacedly admit that it is. "Sorry," I say. "I never seem to be able to hang on to a pen." Hyde later explains the security implications: "If you go in with 10 pens, you have to come out with 10 pens. If one goes missing, we have to pass it over to DHS [Department of Human Services], and it's possible a strip-search may occur." All classroom objects are assessed for weapon and self-harm potential. Hyde recently ordered 120 desks, only to discover they had extendable detachable legs. He laughs at his own mistake. "So what's that, 480 baseball bats? Not surprisingly, they got modified." Since the school commenced, violence has decreased across The Precinct. Lanyon tells me that critical incidents are down 56 per cent. Dangerous flare-ups still occur - in July 2012, it made national news when a youth officer was slashed and another held hostage during an escape attempt outside school hours. But in general, Lanyon couldn't be more enthusiastic about the impact of Parkville College. "It's introduced a more structured day. Like any kids, busy kids are good kids; bored kids are naughty kids, - especially if they're naughty kids, anyway.

"The fact we've got young people who have previously never read on their own, reading books in silence for 50 minutes, that speaks for itself. And back on the units we have kids electing not to watch TV or play PlayStation, but to read instead. That's unheard of in youth justice." I'm on site when the school's first and last Code Black for the term occurs. It happens in Street Art, when one boy calls another a junkie. Fists fly, SERT responds, and Parkville College's fourth-term copybook is blotted on the second-last day. "We were so close," Murray moans over a staff-room sandwich. "We almost got through a whole term." He flashes a smile that shows off his blackened eye tooth: "Are you sure it happened after class started?" I spend my last hours meeting students and talking about writing. Troy (graffiti tag name Buzz) wants to know what I get paid for articles like this and asks, "D'you wanna start co-writing with me? I gotta lot of stories." He then shows me one, a moving piece entitled Feels So Real, about dreaming of trains, parks, shops and his girlfriend, and what it feels like to wake up, as he has for the last four years, and still be in detention. Shane, 16, is writing a TV script titled How to Make Raspberry and Custard Tartlets. "I've had the idea from the start of the year," he says. I read the first line: Host: "Today I'm going to show you how to make raspberry and custard tartlets because they are good. I'm also a sucker for desserts."

"By the end of show," Shane explains, "the host has made the tartlets and everyone loves them." Hyde offers compliments to all. Later, he may call parents or grandparents of the boys to say they are going well. "We only ever call with good news. We'd never call and say, 'Your kid's screwing up', because they already know that. They're usually really surprised, really pleased." An alarming percentage of students don't have relatives for the teachers to call. "Take a kid like Shane," Hyde explains. "I've asked him and he said, 'I dunno, maybe my YJ [youth justice worker].' His mum died quite recently. He's been to eight or nine schools and even though he's really articulate, really bright, he's got some real issues." Shane is inside for committing rape. I watch the compassion being shown to him, the concentrated teaching effort, the quality of staff resources and the unconditional positive regard. I put it to Murray that sections of the public would be upset, especially victims of crime and talkback radio hosts.

Murray grabs my pen, which I (thankfully) still have at close quarters, and starts writing in my pad: Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Article 26

1. Everyone has the right to education ...

2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality ... "Australia ratified that treaty," Murray says, "and unless these kids are no longer human beings, they are part of 'everyone'. Education is a difficult concept to define, but it's got to be somewhere around the mark of 'making better people and better societies'. In my view we've especially got to make a child like Shane better, when you think of what he's done." He hands me my pad. "The past is the past. The only thing I can affect is the future. And I don't want this child to rape again. I don't want another victim." *Names of youths in detention have been changed.