A couple of years ago young person Rohan* joined the innovative Aboriginal-led school Ngutu College. Pronounced ‘noo-doo’, Ngutu is Kaurna for ‘knowledge’, and is an independent not-for-profit school in Adelaide on Kaurna Country. At the time Rohan was halfway through year 7 and had been, according to Kamilaroi man and Ngutu’s Head of College Andrew Plastow, “very, very unsuccessful in school.”
“He’s somebody who was being pulled very hard towards the streets,” Andrew says.
What a difference a new school and a new approach makes. Rohan is now a committed and involved learner. Part of the school’s leadership program, his school week includes regular sessions playing the yidaki (the Kaurna word for digeridoo) and welding. He has excelled at both thanks to Ngutu’s innovative approach to learning.
“He has incredible skills and creates all sorts of amazing artwork through his welding; he’s part of band practice as well as our leadership program, through the medium of ice hockey, a program that’s sponsored and has around 12 schools from disadvantaged communities. They come together and learn to play ice hockey, but really they learn how to be part of a team and demonstrate leadership,” says Andrew, adding that a number of graduates have gone on to play for the Boomerangs, the national Aboriginal ice hockey team. Rohan is showing great promise as a goalie.
“He’s been able, through his passions, to see the value he has and really turned things around. There are so many individual stories like that here. When children find their passion they take their education so much more seriously and get themselves on a positive track. When you connect with something you’re passionate about it changes your whole spirit.”
The ice hockey team, the welding and regular sessions on the yidaki are all proof of Rohan’s personal strengths and successes, providing him with a strong foundation that isn’t reliant on NAPLAN results and a western-style curriculum.
Ngutu is a trailblazing school that integrates Aboriginal knowledges and creativity into a fully compliant formal curriculum, learning that is tailored to maximise the strengths of the individual child.
“We spent our first year as an amalgamated school looking to set up structures to do things very differently, including handing over a lot of curriculum choice to children,” says Andrew, a Kamilaroi man.
This included vertical classrooms that saw children from kindergarten to year 7 in the same cohort overseen by three staff, replicating the notion of kinship, and a range of subjects taught that may focus on maths or English but can equally include options for learning key ‘languages’ such as timber, clay, or wire in addition to oral and written languages catering for the child’s own language strengths.
“The expectation was they’d cover the curriculum across the year but they’d the choose the order in which they did that and how they did that, providing a lot of agency in their learning,” Andrew says.
Andrew ultimately left Alberton and a decades-long career as a public-school principal, disillusioned at a system that didn’t empower Aboriginal children and a public education system he felt had lost its way.
Instead, he took the experience gained there and set up Ngutu College, which today boasts a cohort of 290 children and young people from K-11, 48.4 percent of whom are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander with the goal of reaching 51 percent by 2027.
(From left): Ngutu head of college Andrew Plastow; Ngani staff/chef Anna-Maria Walker; and Ngutu Elder in residence Uncle Moogy Sumner with Ngutu Seniors – part of the Ngani Café learning program.
“The 51 percent is about us being a majority somewhere, but it’s equally important we are effectively half and half because we don’t want to be a place that’s [Aboriginal only], I don’t think that achieves anything to have that segregation.”
The College’s vision is to redesign schooling to value all education equally, both western and Aboriginal, encouraging children to follow their interests, as displayed by the college motto ‘Aboriginal cultures are our soul, young people are our heart and creativity our backbone.’ Specialist educators teach music, dance and visual arts in the school’s multi-disciplinary and state-of-the-art facilities that also includes science, technology and innovation. Earlier this year Ngutu opened Ngani café, a culturally safe space providing hands-on skills and experience including barista training, front of house and food preparation.
“Schools should be about children, not just a cog in an education business, it’s about really valuing them and having joy in the process of learning rather than it being something that is done to them,” Andrew says.
Ngutu staff have grown from 12 people in 2021 to 95 in 2025, 20 percent of them Aboriginal, a number that is growing each year, an important aspect of integrating what Andrew calls ‘the Aboriginal way’ with the formal western curriculum. The staff includes specific cultural advisers who guides the children through traditional practices, including taking them on Country to share sacred sites and stories.
The funding model, too, is innovative. Fees make up only 4 percent of the school’s income, which is funded through recurrent federal and state subsidies, social impact investment loans from foundations including Alberts The Tony Foundation, and philanthropy.
Alberts, through The Tony Foundation, came on board in July 2023, drawn to Ngutu College’s innovative approach to rethinking education.
For head of the Foundation, Alberts executive director Ingrid Albert,
“We were deeply impressed by the way Ngutu is creating more equitable outcomes through a culturally grounded, student-centred model. It offers a genuinely inclusive environment – not only for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, but also for many non-Aboriginal and neurodivergent young people who are thriving thanks to its flexible approach to learning.”
Ngutu is increasingly attracting attention locally and abroad, receiving awards and invitations to speak about its trailblazing integration of Aboriginal knowledge and formal curriculum for successful learning.
Researchers from two local universities are documenting the development of the College to influence the policy direction of education. Ngutu has recently partnered with the Jumbunna Institute at UTS to develop an evaluation framework so the college can provide data-driven insights into the model and demonstrate long-term the difference it is making.
“Our number one priority is to really prove the model,” Andrew says. “We’ve got to show our year 12 children are going down positive pathways, whatever that might be.”
Since Andrew founded Ngutu he hasn’t looked back.
“I love doing what I’m doing because we see the stories of change that provides the rich data rather than simply providing NAPLAN and census data that doesn’t really show the depth of the growth of human beings.”
*not his real name
(Images courtesy of Ngutu College).
