The Prime Minister has caused upset on his remote Indigenous trip over his comments about a far north Queensland primary school.

During his five-day trip Tony Abbott visited the Bamaga primary school as part of his drive to get more kids to school.

It was a highlight of the week and gained national coverage.

Mr Abbott held a press conference at the school in the Northern Area Peninsula (NPA) and attributed the high attendance rate partly to the Government's new school attendance officers.

Their role is to provide encouragement, work with families who are not showing up, help transport children to school and follow up on school absence.

But the head of the school's P&C and husband of the school's principal, Richard McLean, said the remote attendance officers were not a key reason so many kids were coming to class.

He said the statistics were just as positive before the attendance officers started work.

"The statistics have clearly shown that before the ... program was rolled out they were quite high," he said.

Mr McLean said there were a number of factors behind the strong figures.

"I believe the credit needs to go to where it is deserved," he said.

"It's things like working collaboratively with parents, understanding the community, stronger relationships with families and students, great teachers - not just wanting to come up here for the points or the lifestyle - and really good leadership along valuing our identity.

"We also set high expectations for our students and with the support from parents and teachers we are seeing them succeed.

"This, in turn, empowers the students and they are proud to come to school because of their success."

'Maybe he hasn't done his homework'

At the same media event the Prime Minister spoke about the teaching methods he had witnessed at the school.

"Certainly we did see a form of explicit and direct instruction in these classrooms today and as someone who has been in Indigenous classrooms at different times over quite a few years now, they were the best classrooms I've ever seen," Mr Abbott said.

"And most of those classrooms had a very high percentage of people attending."

Mr Mclean objected to Mr Abbott's statement.

"That's not correct at all. There is no direct instruction taught in this school, it's explicit teaching and explicit teaching only," he said.

Loading...

Mr McLean said explicit teaching was the philosophy of 'I do, we do, you do' in the classroom, whereby the teacher shows students what to do, then they do it together, then the student repeats the practise alone.

Direct instruction is a model promoted by Cape York Indigenous leader Noel Pearson based on breaking down concepts to their smallest components as a way of learning.

Mr McLean said the two models were very different, and the Prime Minister had failed to recognise that.

"I think it was disappointing, as the head of the P&C, for the principal, for the teachers as well," Mr Mclean said.

"They put in a huge effort, the parents and the students who are innocent in all this. For that praise to go to somewhere else I think was unfair.

"Maybe he hasn't done his homework."

Mr McLean also paid tribute to the work of Indigenous education expert Chris Sarra.

"It's [because of] the work of people like Chris Sarra and the Stronger Smarter Institute that we are seeing transformation in schools across this country and that's what's happening at the schools in the NPA," he said.