There are no bells at Parkerville Grove School to mark the start and the end of the day. No rows of desks, no colourful uniforms, no fluorescent-lit corridors.
Walk through the gate on the school’s first Monday and you’ll find teenagers sinking into floor cushions and padded ottomans under soaring ceilings that once sheltered nuns and the children in their care.
When STM had an exclusive look ahead of opening day, outdoor tables were being unpacked and assembled, while winding paths through the garden were waiting for volunteers to descend with turf and plants.
It felt more like a home or retreat in the making than a school.
And that’s the point. Perth’s newest school in the hills was built to look as little like a campus as possible. Because school, for these students, has often meant hardship and trauma.
As Parkerville opens its doors next week, it could be the first time in a long while since some students have even ventured through a school gate.
This might be because they’ve experienced abuse, neglect, family violence or been exposed to psychological harm. Children so damaged by past trauma they may lash out unexpectedly or struggle to follow directions — making traditional schooling almost impossible.
Kim Brooklyn, chief executive officer of Parkerville Children and Youth Care, says far too many children have crashed out of mainstream education in the past 15 years because of the unbearable weight of harm they’ve experienced.
“Mainly because when children are impacted by trauma, they have behaviours that are not always easy to manage, and it’s not because they’re bad kids or sad kids — it’s just because harm has happened to them, and then they’re reacting from that harmful space,” she says.
Brooklyn says traumatised kids often stop showing up to school regularly, or even drop out. Many end up in youth or adult homelessness services.
“So the trajectory is really awful, and yet there’s these amazingly talented and gifted kids . . . who are just fantastic, that if given the right environment could actually be really successful, and that’s what we want to do,” she says.
Parkerville Grove is believed to be the first school in the nation to specialise in teaching only students who have been exposed to complex trauma.
Operating on the belief that young people need to be healed before they can learn, the school aims for a “therapeutic first, education second” approach.
The charity’s own data illustrates the need for more support, with Parkerville’s Child, Youth and Family Centres seeing 668 children impacted by child sexual abuse, family and domestic violence or homicide just in the past financial year.
Demand arrived long before the doors opened, with the school sadly having to turn families away, and ones who made it are travelling from as far as Yanchep and Mandurah to get there.
Opening day marks the start of a new chapter — not only in the students’ lives — but also in the long history of the historical Parkerville Children’s Home, founded by two Anglican nuns in 1903.
The original Parkerville Waif’s Home began with a single hut and a barn on a bush block, then grew to a school, a chapel and several cottages where children were housed.
The heritage-listed but decaying cottages have been transformed into classrooms as part of the $20 million refurbishment.
Retaining the floorboards, fireplaces, deep verandas and soaring ceilings that reflect the past, now each light-filled classroom has been elegantly decorated in calming blue and grey tones.
Instead of desks and chairs, students can choose to work while sitting on floor cushions, ottomans around a low table or tall chairs around a high table. Breakout areas contain rugs and comfy sofas to sink into.
While the classroom fit-outs could have sprung from an interior design magazine, they’ve also been based on a scientific understanding of how to soothe troubled minds.
Brooklyn explains the brains of kids who have suffered trauma are frequently set on high-alert — their emotions on a hair trigger — limiting their capacity to learn.
“The curved elements and the colours are all designed to help soften the brain function, so that kids who are anxious — because they all will be — have just a bit more of an opportunity to chill before they react,” she says.
“The gardens are circular, everything has circular movement, as opposed to sharp edges.
“We’ve designed all of our spaces to have breakout areas. Even our outdoor spaces are designed so that young people can take some time away, regulate their emotions, and come back into the schooling environment when they’re ready.”
The independent secondary school will start with just 60 children from Years 7 to 10, with plans to extend to Years 11 and 12 from next year.
Each class will be restricted to a maximum of 15 students, overseen by a teacher and a youth worker, backed by school psychologists, occupational and speech therapists.
The past 15 years have seen a big increase in the number of Curriculum and Re-engagement in Education (CARE) schools which enrol teens with poor attendance or behavioural issues who have disengaged from mainstream schools.
Most CARE schools — and many mainstream schools — now offer what is known as “trauma informed” education, responsive to the needs of vulnerable children.
What sets Parkerville Grove apart, Brooklyn says, is its focus on enrolling only those children who have experienced complex trauma, drawing on the charity’s years of specialisation in the field.
“We have had to say no to some young people because they were presenting with disabilities rather than harm,” she says. “We’ve had really desperate parents trying to fit their child into the enrolment criteria. It’s quite distressing for the people who have to say ‘no’ to them.”
Founding principal Alice Alibrandi says there’s been huge interest since enrolments opened, with some parents crying over the phone with relief on learning their child had been accepted.
“We’ve had (applications from) some students who haven’t been attending school since the beginning of the year, for whatever reason, we’ve had students who have been consistently suspended for behaviour,” she says.
“We’ve had kids who have been needing medical treatment, so that has impacted their ability to engage.
“The parents are just wanting their young people to be involved in a school environment that’s going to be able to help them to engage and help them to try and develop their self-esteem and find hope again — because for some of these young people they just have given up, and that’s really quite sad.
“We’ve got some very bright students who are coming through, who are just desperate to learn, but for whatever reason, they have missed lots of time at school, which then makes that quite difficult and challenging, right down to students who will definitely struggle to learn literacy and numeracy, and we’re prepared for that as well.”
Alibrandi — who has more than 30 years’ experience in education — says while students will still follow the WA curriculum, their timetable will be flexible, adjusted based on the students’ readiness to learn on a particular day.
“My vision is that every single student that comes through the school will be on their own personal healing plan and their own personal learning journey, and even though that sounds quite overwhelming, I think it’s really achievable,” she says. “And if we’re lacking in expertise within the school we’re fully prepared to go outside and outsource to make sure that we do our best to make every young person’s dream come true.”
A bus service will pick students up from Midland train station, with some students coming great distances each day. Students will receive breakfast of cereal or cheese toasties when they arrive on campus.
“We’ll be having family-style hot lunches every day, where the whole school team and the students will all eat together, which is a really good learning experience for them as well, because it’s growing that sense of community,” Alibrandi says.
Brooklyn says it’s been a long journey to get to this stage, after years of planning. The project includes renovating 14 buildings on the bush campus, ranging in age from 1903 to the 1950s. And, like all renovations, refurbishing so many dilapidated structures brought its own challenges.
The dining hall, which will eventually boast a commercial kitchen where students will help a chef plan and prepare lunches, won’t be ready in time for the start of term.
Brooklyn says that particular building has provided many joys.
“There were five ceilings in it to start, and then we opened the cool room,” she chuckles. “We didn’t think there was much termite damage, but the termite damage was phenomenal, so they had to rebuild a lot of it.”
Staying true to Parkerville’s early role in the State’s history of education and care was also important.
Education has always been central to the site, she says — even when the nuns first opened the children’s home schooling was a priority, and they went on to open one of the first kindergartens in WA on the campus.
“It’s still called the kindergarten, and that will be the Year 12 classroom, because the Year 12s would think that’s funny,” Brooklyn says.
Mementos of Parkerville’s history — including a nun’s shoe found under the floorboards and a door with the names and heights of dozens of children scratched on it — are neatly stacked in the old chapel, awaiting storage in the archives.
Brooklyn acknowledges the campus has a chequered past; not everyone who lived there has happy memories of their time in care.
“In the 1960s and 70s, in particular, we weren’t the best place for children to be,” she says. “That’s on public record. It is a deeply distressing period.
“So this is breathing life back into it and coming back to some of its core purposes.”
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