At least 1.6 million Australian children missed a month’s worth of lessons last year, as school attendance slipped back towards pandemic-level lows. Source: The Australian.
The phenomenon of school refusal – dubbed “school can’t’’ – has doubled the number of children homeschooled by parents since 2019.
Students showed up for just 88.3 per cent of school days in 2024 – down from 91.4 per cent in 2019, before the pandemic forced widespread school closures.
Forty per cent of students missed at least 10 per cent of lessons last year – meaning that 1.65 million students skipped the equivalent of an entire month of schooling.
In 2019, barely a quarter of students missed so many classes.
Data released by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority on Wednesday also reveals a sharp rise in the proportion of children classified as disabled. Disability rates rose from 19.9 per cent of all students in 2019 to 26.8 per cent last year.
More than a quarter of school students are now classified as needing extra assistance in class because of disability.
About one in seven students has a cognitive disability – up from one in 11 students in 2019.
Nine per cent of all students have a socio-emotional disability, compared to 5.7 per cent in 2019.
The proportion of school students with a physical disability slipped from 2.5 per cent in 2019 to 2.2 per cent last year.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, as well as students from the poorest families, have suffered the biggest falls in school attendance over the past five years. Nearly two-thirds of Indigenous students missed at least a month’s worth of lessons last year, compared to just over half of them in 2019.
The Australian Education Research Organisation has blamed racism, bullying, Covid-19 illness, the flu and flooding for falling student attendance, in a report commissioned by the nation’s education ministers in 2023 and made public yesterday.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said school attendance rates had been falling since 2015 because the former Coalition government had failed to include attendance targets in its National School Reform Agreement with state and territory governments.
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School attendance rates slip as more kids skip class (By Natasha Bita, The Australian)
