"But I've never once heard him yell or raise his voice," Leeton says."He will just sit there and talk to them. I think we have got 115 students at the moment. Mark knows their names, where they live, their parents. There is not a kid that gets past without a cuddle or a handshake."
After a young pregnant student had her baby midway through her final year and never returned he realised that teenage pregnancy should not mean that a girl did not get an education, that if she dropped out of school the cycle would continue. "We let her down. I was angry with myself that I hadn't actually listened and paid attention to what she needed," Mark says."I can see how lots of people think that life is over for them. But I can see them picking up their dreams again," Mark says.
"And when their kids have children in 20 years' time, their kids won't ever know that it's not cool to go to school." Teenaged nursing mothers studying for their HSC can be next door to a boys' sex education for jail class. A powerful deterrent if the boys' faces are anything to go by.