Cunnamulla P-12 State School is a rural and remote Prep to Year 12 campus located on the land of the Kunja people in the Darling Downs South West region.
With strong ties to the community and a rich educational history, CP12SS was founded in 1877 as Cunnamulla's first school and is situated on the banks of the beautiful Warrego River. The township is approximately 900km or nine hours drive west of Brisbane, with the closest major centre being Charleville 200km to the north.
While the primary industries within the district are sheep, goats and cattle, Cunnamulla is also a burgeoning tourist hub and is home to numerous festivals, amateur and nationally-recognised local artists, community sports, and great food and coffee.
Cunnamulla P-12 State School draws its enrolments from the town of Cunnamulla and surrounding properties. The school has approximately 130 students and 38 staff members including a Principal, Deputy Principal, Head of Department (Curriculum), Guidance Officer, Community Education Counsellor, Classroom Teachers, Teacher Aides, a Learning Support Team, an IT Assistant, Admin Officers, a Tuckshop Convenor, a Groundsman and Cleaners. The school also has a visiting School Nurse, Social Worker and Instrumental Music Teacher.
For the health, wellbeing and learning needs of our clientele, the school is well-supported by various government agencies, regional services, and local community groups who visit on an as-needed basis.
Cunnamulla P-12 State School's First Nations population is 82% with various Aboriginal language groups including Kunja, Badjari, Budjiti, Kullilli, Kooma, Mardigan and Murrawarri represented. For this reason, we refer to our students as "gundoos" which is a local Indigenous word that means child. Under the direction of the school's leadership and at the request of our gundoos, CP12SS is continually striving to improve its cultural capabilities and build into the learning environment connections to the land, its people and its history.
In order for this to happen, we strongly encourage our teachers to create safe learning spaces for their gundoos and to build positive and caring relationships of trust with them before any learning commences. In alignment with the Department of Education mandate and, more importantly, the genuine needs of our cohort, we prioritise the learning of reading and the need for improved literacy skills through the teaching of synthetic phonics and by engaging with decodable readers and the PLD (Promoting Literacy Development) program. We also champion the contextualising of unit and lesson content and the provision of experiential learning experiences so our gundoos can recognise the real-world relevance of what is being taught. Finally, Cunnamulla P-12 State School is a PBL (Positive Behaviour for Learning) school.
At the end of the day, our aim is to convince each gundoo that school is fun and a place where they want to be, and to teach them to love and value learning in order for them to be successful.