Isabella State School (ISS) is a primary school located in Edmonton, a southern suburb of Cairns, Far North Queensland. The school services a local catchment area that spans two suburbs with approximately 500 students from Prep to Year 6. ISS is one of three local primary schools in the area. Of those students 40% identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. In addition to this, 12% of students speak English as an additional language. Approximately 4% of students have an intellectual or physical disability.

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Demographically, the school is situated within a lower socio-economic area of Cairns and experiences higher levels of juvenile offending, homelessness and domestic and family violence, as well as children placed in Out-of-Home-Care. Families in the area have higher rates of transience compared to other parts of Queensland, with students transitioning between Cairns South and rural or remote communities of Queensland.

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The ISS netball program begins in year 3 with the development of foundation netball skills for all year 3 students through curriculum based activities. Over the past few years, our senior representative netball teams have grown from 1 team to 5 teams. These teams have included a senior boys, senior girls, junior boys, junior girls and combined First Nations team who have all competed at Cairns competitions.

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Cairns region has a strong netball community, however due to distance from town, lack of public transport and costs associated with that, not all families have access to that club. Isabella State School is a feeder school for Bentley Park College which has a strong netball community. By increasing netball activity at Isabella State School it's hoped that students will become involved and then continue their netball journey in the future, making a more active and social community.

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Currently when attending any sort of inter-sport carnival for netball, there are very few netball uniforms available at ISS that students can wear as a team, with students wearing their normal school uniform instead. The addition of uniforms will create interest in netball and add value and acknowledgement to the school and the children involved in these teams.

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Through encouragement of playing netball at school, ISS boys have paved the way for other boys in the region to participate in netball, including two of our previous male students who have played at the Queensland championships.

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We would like to purchase 2 sets of netball uniforms, for junior and senior teams, including options for boys and girls. We believe that new uniforms for the teams would attract new players. It would also promote the teams within the wider school community through promotional opportunities. With these new uniforms, we could also add “Netta” teams (year 3 & 4) to our representative pathways.​