They are only 30 kilometres apart in distance but each of the nine schools in the Southern Cross Small Schools Learning Community has something that makes it unique.

Cabbage Tree Island Public School, for example, established in 1893 as an Aboriginal school, is on an island in the Richmond River and remains a largely indigenous school.

Wardell Public and Rous Public have long histories dating to pioneer days.

There’s been a public school at Wardell since 1867 and at Rous the school is now the hub of the once thriving village.

These schools, small in size but big on ideas, are discovering there are exciting professional opportunities for teachers – and new learning experiences for students – when they band together and share expertise under the umbrella of a “learning community”.

There are at least 40 learning communities in the NSW public school system – each linking from six to 20 schools that combine to run programs ranging from sport to music and creative arts, gifted and talented classes and professional development for staff.

The Southern Cross learning community is one of the latest groups to be established and involves far north coast public schools at Broadwater, Cabbage Tree Island, Empire Vale, Fernleigh, Newrybar, Pearces Creek, Rous, Tregeagle and Wardell.

Each school has a teaching principal and enrolments range from 25 students to 110 students.

Long-time Wardell Public principal, Brian Mooney, said some of the schools had informally met up for years, particularly for sport, but the formation of a learning community added new impetus to their plans and enhanced their ability to promote their schools.

The schools now run combined events once a term, such as spelling bees, chess competitions and debating, hosted by one of the learning community schools.

Mr Mooney, who transfers this term as principal at Casino West Public School, said the camaraderie and extra opportunities for professional development were key factors to the early enthusiasm for the learning community.

“In a large school you will have a number of teachers working in the stages [of learning] but in smaller schools the kindergarten teacher may not have other kindergarten teachers to talk to,” he said.

“By combining we can help with that professional development and link people together working in the same stages.

“It’s a sanity break for the principal too, to have a chance to meet as a collegiate group because we have similar concerns and successes.” This year the learning community will work on linking gifted and talented students; last year all the schools targeted numeracy as an area for development.

Another learning community called First North near Lismore was formed in late 2006 and is enjoying the rewards of combining each school’s strengths, particularly the intellectual firepower of their staff.

The six schools – Bexhill, Clunes, Eltham, Eureka, Rosebank and Upper Coopers Creek public schools – will this year start a major project to improve science and technology teaching after successfully applying for an Australian Government Quality Teacher Program grant.

It will allow the Year 5 and 6 teachers from the small schools to collaborate on science and technology lesson sequences and increase teacher expertise in the subjects.

Southern Cross University will be a “critical friend” to the schools during the project.

“In combining for school events and teacher professional development we create a ‘virtual big school’,” the First North schools wrote in their grant submission.

Richard Fuller, principal of Rosebank Public School, said the First North Learning Community name came from the fact “we are the first schools north of Lismore”.

There are a total of 440 students at the six schools, with an enrolment range of 20 students to 135.

“The learning community is really suiting our needs for the promotion of public education on the far north coast because we wanted to maintain our enrolment share,” Mr Fuller said.

“We have our own identity but we are also part of a collective.” Enrolments at Rosebank in recent years have risen from 27 students to 70 students “and I attribute that to the learning community”, he said.

The learning community started by looking at what small schools had difficulty achieving due to their size.

Soon there were combined transition to high school days for Year 6 students, beach awareness days, a central band, drumming and percussion groups, combined sport and a gifted and talented student program.

The schools work together on data collection, so instead of surveying how 10 students are faring in Year 3 they might look at a sample of 100 students across the six schools.

Principals have also made videos of lessons with Quality Teaching outcomes for use across the network.

The north coast regional schools promotions officer, Kylie Wilkinson, said schools quickly saw the benefits of their “combined strength”.

Sometimes it was getting a better price for equipment if there was a group buy or expanding professional development opportunities.

“It’s lifted the morale of teachers in small schools, because they can sometimes feel a bit isolated,” she said.

“My role is in formalising the groups and helping with their promotion.

But they really take the concept and run with it, they spring off each other.”