While Ms Bruniges has been back to Walgett High – where she is negotiating changes to provide stability, appoint new principals and improve results at the school – Ms Fernando hasn't. Walgett High School student, Keria Fernando,16, with her grandmother, Iris Fernando. Credit:Peter Rae Sick of being hit, nudged, and harassed, Ms Fernando – a good student who describes her best skill as "sitting down and listening" – walked out. With her grandmother Iris' blessing, she plans to move to Dubbo South to finish school. "I want to get an education, and get a year 12 certificate and make a good name for myself. And I want to be a mechanic," she said. "Kids go around fighting others over nothing. If you don't hang out with them, you are their enemy." And it is not only students who are assaulted, teachers have been, too. Former principals and teachers say verbal assault and threats are routine.

"I can tell you that there are lot of teachers that are frightened," she said. "There are young boys that tell young female teachers that they are literally going to f--k them. To be a young girl and sit and listen to a teacher spoken to by a boy in their class, and be powerless ..." Alyssa Walford, 18, who works in Walgett, after schooling in Sydney. Credit:Peter Rae Not too long ago Walgett High School students used to whoop with relief when they came back over the town's flood levee after a bus trip away. These days, the kids are whooping with glee as they leave. Those who are left sit in empty classrooms with one or two others. Bek and Jed Cullen with the children, Pippa, 6, Jock, 8 and Molly, 10, on the property near Walgett. Credit:Peter Rae

Walgett has a potential high school population of around 350. Yet only 149 students are enrolled in the local high school, according to a census by the NSW department in February. Of those, nearly all are Indigenous and nearly 90 per cent come from the poorest homes in NSW. Only two students did the HSC last year. Attendance averages 50-60 per cent, Ms Bruniges said, even though eight attendance officers are employed. On Tuesday, only 41 students attended a school assembly. Not even a visit by rugby league legends Nathan Merritt and David Peachey was enough to get kids in the league -crazy town to attend or stick around after roll call. About 100 Walgett students have left to take up Indigenous scholarships at private schools around the state and in Queensland, said local member Kevin Humphries. Others have been sent away to boarding schools or to stay with relatives in Sydney and regional towns that provide a better and safer education. On nearby farms, generations of non-indigenous farmers have always sent their kids away to boarding school. But now families - black and white- say there is little option. "For the life of me, the last thing I want is to send my child away. But this is what the whole scenario at the high school has done" says a local mother.

Those who do attend the school regularly move in and out. Department statistics reveal that every year, 75 per cent of the school's students leave or re-enter, giving it one of the highest mobility rates of any school in the state.



That causes instability for students and teachers, and creates gaps in learning that can cause students to zone out. Ms Fernando has lived with mum in Dubbo, in Queensland, before returning to Walgett to live with her nan. What is prompting the outbreak of violence at the school? Experts like Ms Bruniges say it is a mix of disengaged youth, turnover among staff at the school and community problems. Some blame the local Aboriginal Education Advisory Committee for undermining school discipline. It, in turn, suggests the school's teachers don't understand Aboriginal culture and opt for discipline over understanding. Others like Ghillar Michael Anderson, a founder of the Aboriginal tent embassy, and a former school captain in the late '60s, say the Aboriginal community is splintered – with the remnants of former sovereign nations living side by side, a legacy of when language groups were forced to live in the local Gingie mission. While the town's streets are safe, many homes are not. Domestic violence is the second highest in the state, and breaches of Apprehended Violence Orders are nine times higher than the state's averages.

Young Keria may not be scared, but many adults are. Time after time, parents refused to speak publicly about their concerns about the school for fear of retribution. In a small town of 2300, the same names appear again and again on Aboriginal organisations that control housing, health and other services. Because of the violence and results, local businesses and the council complain they can't keep staff with students of high school age. A quick poll finds that anyone who can scrape together the money is sending their children away. Others are planning their escape routes, and scouting out jobs in other areas where the schools are better. Sending kids away has just become easier, too. Education Minister Adrian Piccoli says there is no school he cares about more than Walgett, and his department's head is pledging to expand opportunities for children at the school so they have more pastoral care and a greater range of courses. Yet at the same time, his department recently agreed to provide any family in Walgett with the isolated children's allowance. It will remove the usual requirements that families have to be more than 56 kilometres from a local school to qualify. Even a family that lives next door to the Walgett High School will now be eligible if they choose to send their children to another school. (Aboriginal families have a similar flexibility with Abstudy). It's a victory for the Isolated Parents and Children's Association in NSW which has been lobbying for the "bypass" for 15 years because of its concerns about the school, including a lack of subject choices.

Walgett's exemption is temporary, but it will join Lord Howe Island and The Rock as the only remote towns in NSW where parents get this exemption. But Walgett's former school captain, Bek Cullen, is taking another stance. She loved the school, which had Indigenous and non-indigenous students when she attended. But she has lost faith in the department. Her children go to the Catholic primary school, where not one of last year's year six class went on to the high . Despite the problems, she wants her children to follow in family tradition and go to the same high school that she and her mother attended. She also says her small family construction business can't afford the $100,000 it would cost a year to send the three children to boarding school. Only about 55 people attended a community meeting held at the school on Tuesday night to discuss strategic direction, including fewer than five parents of current high school students.

Faced with jargon, and asked to write her views about the school curriculum on yellow post it notes, Mrs Cullen lost hope. "If you want my three kids, you have three years to fix it," she told the meeting. "I have never felt more insecure about my school" she said.

As a former teacher at Walgett high, she despairs at how anything can be done before a new principal is appointed. The high school has had more than a dozen principals in 10 years, and the acting principal's term is limited. The increase in violence spiked this year after the departure of Richard Rule. The veteran teacher was credited with improving results and discipline at the primary and high school.

Earlier this week Ms Bruniges announced that for the first time ever, the department would use an executive head hunter to recruit a new executive principal at the high school and a new primary principal. Her top priority was looking at ways to re-engage students who wanted to learn and provide other options to those students who didn't. A big challenge in a town like Walgett is what to do with those students who are expelled. Most end up hanging out on the streets without any educational or vocational prospects. Ms Bruniges said she planned to introduce a new charter of expectations that set out clear and high expectations for students, parents, teachers and the community. It would also spell out what sort of behaviour was unacceptable and the consequences. "Having a set of expectations that everyone is clear on, students, staff and community is critically important," she told Fairfax Media. "It isn't clear at this point. And we need to apply that set of expectations consistently. So everyone has the same message: If you come to school, it is a place of learning, it is not a gathering place." For many Aboriginal elders, the fear is that those children who leave will be lost to their communities forever, and those who stay in the school have little ambition or hope.

Many senior Indigenous educators say the Minister and the department are evading the need for review of the "Connected Communities" program in the town, which runs in 15 schools in the region and aims to give Aboriginal communities a bigger voice in running the schools. Bob Morgan, chair of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education at Newcastle University, says "I know the school can be turned around – if people stop playing politics, and listen to other voices outside the school". Alyssa Walford, an 18-year-old who attended St Scholastica's College in Sydney on an Indigenous scholarship, has recently returned home to Walgett where she is working as a dental assistant to save money. Like her two sisters, who also went to Schols as it is called, she wanted to go away to high school although it was hard being away from home. At times she wanted to leave, but now she is gearing up to return to Sydney to encourage other Indigenous girls at the school to overcome homesickness and stick at it. What does she want to do?

Her reply is similar to every other teen whom the Herald interviewed: "Probably to get away, to get out of town," she said.