At any one time the school catered for about 30 students from western NSW,  all aged between 10 and 18, about 90 per cent of them Aboriginal.

Students Lionel, Wade and Tyson welcomed the ministers with a song and presented them with a hand-crafted emu caller.

Lionel, who composed the song, said he loved how music allowed him to express himself.

“It’s relaxing, it calms you down from doing bad stuff like fighting,” he said. 

His biggest musical influence was Archie Roach.

“He tells stories about his life and people listen,” he said.

In a classroom, Mr Grant chatted with students about school and football and told them he had lived in many of the centres they were from, including Tamworth and Bourke. 

Donning his arts minister cap, Mr Grant gave the thumbs up to some of the Indigenous-themed students paintings on the wall, and told them one of his favourite artworks was by Aboriginal artist Lewis Burns, who had mentored students at the centre.

Mr Grant told the class to learn as much as they could, then “get out of here and we don’t wanna see you back”.

Ms Williams sat with students who were using iPads purchased with a recent NSW government grant designed to improve digital literacy and numeracy.

“The boys are engaged and reading, and it doesn’t matter if they’re reading about football or whatever, they’re reading and developing literacy and numeracy skills,” she said.

Mr Grant said many who did not have the opportunity to see inside the school did not understand the hard work and effort that went on to help steer the students away from crime and into more productive lifestyles.

As a former police officer, Mr Grant said he had seen firsthand a cycle of disadvantage, boredom and crime that regional and indigenous kids could get caught up in and the damage that could do to communities.

Commenting on a student’s earlier remarks that his current visit to the centre was not his first and he had come for “a holiday”, Mr Grant said it was a tragedy that for some children the centre was “a better environment than the ones they had come from”.

Teacher Renae said smaller class sizes allowed more individual attention for students, but making education interesting and relevant could be a challenge given many had become disengaged with traditional education.

“Their literacy and numeracy skills are often below those of mainstream students so we try to build those and try to give positive reinforcement, it’s definitely meaningful and rewarding and I couldn’t imagine going back to a regular classroom environment,” she said.