One of Australia’s oldest independent Indigenous schools is in crisis after its former principal was found guilty of physically assaulting four students.

The Yipirinya school near Alice Springs has been beset with management problems for more than five years – including the trial of its former principal – and was placed under statutory management after an investigation by the Northern Territory government last year found “serious issues” with governance arrangements.

It’s now facing the redundancies of 20 staff, which the school community has warned would cause the school to “collapse”.

The former principal, Gavin Morris, was appointed by the former Northern Territory government to lead Yipirinya school in October 2021 while it was under statutory administration due to debt. In August 2024 Morris was charged with five counts of physically assaulting students between eight and 13 years of age. He pleaded not guilty. All incidents were alleged to have occurred in 2023. His position as principal was not terminated until November 2024.

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He was found guilty of four of the five counts in October this year, which included choking one student, putting another in a choke hold, and painfully grabbing students’ ears.

During the two-week judge-only trial, the court heard he directed racial slurs at students during two of the incidents. The judge rejected an argument from Morris’s lawyers that he had acted to restrain children who were fighting or misbehaving, saying it was “not justified behaviour”. He is due to be sentenced on Monday.

More than 60 formal complaints of workplace bullying

Last month, the NT government made public an independent investigation into the school, raising a series of serious governance concerns.

Yipirinya school was formed by Aboriginal leaders in the 1970s to educate Indigenous students from town camps and outstations near Alice Springs. It is the only school in Australia that teaches four Aboriginal languages as well as English, and is under the governance of an Aboriginal School Council.

It is under statutory management for the second time in five years, under the leadership of NT government appointee Stuart Reid.

The independent investigation was conducted by George Zapcev. In his report, Zapcev found “serious issues” with the school’s governance arrangements – which were confirmed in a subsequent investigation that was prompted by Zapcev’s findings.

The federal member for Lingiari, Marion Scrymgour. ‘The Northern Territory government, and the statutory manager they have appointed, needs to work to resolve the issues the school is facing.’ Photograph: Aaron Bunch/AAP

Among the concerns raised by Zapcev were: the school council’s decision to approve an $85,000 pay increase to Morris without “clear rationale”; approval granted by Morris to pay for staff cars and private accommodation from school funds; and the continued salary payment for staff not presenting at school. He also raised the suspected non-compliance with anti-discrimination legislation, saying there were “no documented, standardised procedures” or policy.

Zapcev found Morris directed staff to enrol children with high levels of disability “likely beyond the capacity of the school to meet their specific needs” to boost enrolment numbers and funding, as well as employing unqualified staff.

In May 2024, Morris pleaded guilty to hiring two unregistered teachers and was fined $5,000, although a conviction was not recorded.

“The principal employed mothers of children who he wanted their children to be enrolled at the school … even though they did not possess the appropriate skills and experience,” Zapcev wrote in the report.

“Teacher assistants would not always come to work yet they still got paid.

“The principal did request a number of new teaching staff to misrepresent the truth about their employment status at the school to avoid revealing that the school employed some teachers who did not have current [Teachers Registration Board] registration.”

Zapcev also cited more than 60 formal complaints of bullying in the workplace in 2024, which he alleged suggested a culture that “does not reflect a healthy and safe work environment”.

In response to the report, Reid told the school up to 20 employees would be made redundant to ensure the school’s “long-term viability”. Enrolments halved to 186 in 2025, placing Yipirinya $3.7m in debt.

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The Australian government provides most of the funding for non-government schools, and the NT government provides the remainder. Funding is calculated according to enrolment numbers.

The latest My School data showed Yipirinya employed 16 teaching staff and 92 non-teaching staff in 2024. It listed 368 students, however the attendance rate was 31%.

A public letter on behalf of Yipirinya staff last month warned that without intervention the school would “collapse under [the government’s] watch”.

“If these cuts go ahead, Yipirinya school will not be able to function or operate,” the staff said.

“Yipirinya’s staff and families are being punished for mistakes we did not make.”

It also claimed the Yipirinya school board was not given a say in Morris’s appointment.

They called on the NT and federal governments to pause all redundancies, inject emergency funding to stabilise the school’s bottom line and restore Aboriginal statutory management.

The minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, has been in consultation with the school’s staff and said the federal education minister, Jason Clare, had given the school a two-year extension to repay its debt of $3.7m, pushing the deadline to 2031, “so that they can revisit any talk of redundancies”.

The federal member for Lingiari, Labor MP Marion Scrymgour, said the school was a “critical connector for children in town camps who might not otherwise engage in the formal education system” and called for any staff redundancies to be reconsidered.

“Watching the damage caused to the school by the former principal has been deeply sad to many in our community,” she said. “The Northern Territory government, and the statutory manager they have appointed, needs to work to resolve the issues the school is facing.”

The current Yipirinya principal, Justin Colley, said in a community notice last month that the school recognised the “strength, spirit, and bravery of the students, families, and communities affected by the recent court case involving a past principal”.

He said the school had undergone a “complete transformation” under the new leadership team, including introducing staff training and improving accountability.