Parents fight for independent democratic school Darlingia to reopen

Australia Broadcast Center

21-07-2025

When it was time for Deborah Schiel Zaini to choose a school for her son, she wasn't convinced a demand-avoidant child like hers could thrive at any of the available options.
"As a teacher, I could see there were a lot of demands waiting for him at school," she says.
"He was either going to shut down or lash out and be the naughty kid that got into trouble all the time, so he needed something different where there weren't so many demands."
So, armed with experience from her career in the classroom, she founded a school.
Initially run out of a small art deco building on the outskirts of Innisfail in Far North Queensland, Darlingia Forest School was to be "a home away from home where children can run around barefoot if they want".
"We were a democratic school while we were operating and we were hoping to be a democratic school again," Ms Schiel Zaini says.
In her words, that's a school where "children have real voice and choice about their learning".
"There's encouragement but not coercion, and if kids didn't want to do a particular task, we didn't force them," she says.
"We didn't keep them in at lunchtime; we didn't send it (work) home with them to do at home.
"We'd try and figure out why the child doesn't want to do that particular piece of work."
Ms Schiel Zaini said the approach helped struggling children "heal".
"Those were the school refusers and children being bullied at school, or struggling for whatever reason, and then there were some other families who wanted this type of education from the get-go," she said.
But despite enrolments growing to more than a dozen children, the Non-State Schools Accreditation Board shut it down in June 2024.
Ms Schiel Zaini and the parents who believe the school changed their children's lives have been fighting ever since to help it reopen.
Tara Garozzo, whose two youngest daughters attended Darlingia, recalls how "we all cried and cried and cried" when the school had to close partway through the school year.
"It was just a treasure, and it was taken away from us, just so abruptly," she says.
"I loved that they were able to take their time to find where their interests were.
"We'd all sit down around the table for morning tea and we got to talk about what our approach to the day might look like."
Laura Austin, her partner and three children were travelling up the Queensland coast with plans to head to Western Australia around the time Darlingia was opening.
When COVID-19 border closures and the wet season struck, they got a rental in Innisfail and stuck around, enrolling their children in the fledgling school.
Three years on, the family is still in town, the children having found their groove at Darlingia before it closed.
"It was like watching a flower bloom for the first time," Ms Austin says.
Part of Darlingia's philosophy was for students to spend two full days a week outside the classroom.
Ms Austin says one of the school's strengths was that parents were allowed to join the students on these outdoor lessons to see their experiments and projects first-hand.
Ms Schiel Zaini says one of the weekly excursions was to somewhere in nature, like the beach, rainforest or swamps, where they would do English, maths and science lessons.
"And then the other excursion would be to town, so getting to know and love our small town, Innisfail, so hopefully when they grow up, they don't leave the town like a lot of people do," she says.
The outdoor mode of learning was part of what brought Darlingia unstuck in its fresh application to reopen this year.
The school ran afoul of the Non-State Schools Accreditation Board (NSSAB) during its first year of operation, when an inspection found failures to comply with accreditation criteria.
The school made some changes in response to a show cause notice, but not enough to convince NSSAB that its governance and finance arrangements were up to scratch.
Darlingia appealed against NSSAB's 2022 decision to revoke its accreditation at the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT) but after waiting almost two years for an outcome, it was unsuccessful and had to close.
In an 18-page decision seen by the ABC, NSSAB set out its reasons for refusing to grant Darlingia accreditation in May this year.
They included "significant risks with [its] proposed approach of obtaining blanket consents from parents at the beginning of each year to take children off-site".
NSSAB's other potential concerns included:
The refusal has left Darlingia with two options — launch another appeal at QCAT or submit a fresh application for accreditation.
But time is not on their side, and Ms Schiel Zaini has had to rent out the rooms of her school to artists, turning the building into a creative hub.
"I've been knocked down too many times," she says.
Darlingia's board is instead hoping to negotiate a pathway to accreditation by showing it can satisfy NSSAB's requirements.
"We can have all this stuff, and mitigate every concern they have, or we can show evidence of everything they think is missing, literally within less than a few days," Darlingia chairman Michael Ha says.
"I would hope that a governing body always has an open and equitable process for everybody that's fair, that's transparent, that's clear," he says.
"We don't want to have to reapply and waste another six months because ultimately, it's the students who are going to miss out.
"We're not the lone wolf here and what we're doing — it's been done so many times."
In a statement, a spokeswoman for NSSAB said legislation restricted its ability to comment publicly on individual applications and assessments.
However, NSSAB said it had provided Darlingia's board "with significant support to assist it to be compliant" before cancelling its accreditation in 2022.
QCAT concurred in its 2024 ruling that upheld NSSAB's decision, finding it had "exhibited an extraordinary degree of patience" and that it was not its obligation to be an ongoing advisor to the school.
Darlingia is one of four proposed independent schools in Queensland to be refused accreditation since the start of 2021.
In that time, NSSAB has approved 22 of the 34 accreditation applications it has received, while three were withdrawn and five remain under consideration.
Mr Ha, who is deputy principal of Toogoolawa — an independent school on the Gold Coast for boys who have struggled to fit in at mainstream schools — says he has "no worries about [Darlingia's] financial viability once the school operates".
"[We're] keeping it at a relatively low student number," he says.
Darlingia proposed to run its entire program on the base government funding independent schools receive, with consideration to be given to charging parents a small fee for meals provided to students.
Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek recently met with Mr Ha, Ms Schiel Zaini and local state MP Shane Knuth, who has backed the school's bid to regain accreditation.
Mr Knuth, from Katter's Australian Party, says he is "just absolutely impressed" with the school's approach and parental involvement.
"We asked the students, 'If your parents said to you that you don't have to go to school tomorrow, would you stay home?" he says.
Mr Knuth said it was "very unfair" for NSSAB to judge Darlingia's accreditation application based on its first iteration at its former school campus.
Mr Langbroek said legislation prevented him from intervening in accreditation decisions.
"But I will work with the Darlingia School applicants to obtain answers to the questions they have around the Non-State School Accreditation Board's processes," Mr Langbroek said.
A spokesman for the Department of Education said it was working with stakeholders, including NSSAB, to implement accepted recommendations from a review of accreditation criteria for non-state schools.
For now, the parents of about 20 prospective Darlingia students have made other arrangements for their children's education, including homeschooling or enrolling at another independent school.
Independent Schools Queensland, the peak body for non-state schools, has been contacted for comment.