One in five high school students dropping out before Year 12

‘If this doesn’t demonstrate why we need serious reform, I don’t know what does’. Federal Education Minister Jason Clare calls for action to stop teenagers dropping out of school.

A quarter of students dropped out of high school last year in government schools.

One in five teenagers dropped out of high school before finishing Year 12 last year, as retention rates fell to the lowest level in a decade.

New evidence of the Covid-19 pandemic eroding educational outcomes is revealed in fresh Productivity Commission figures to be published on Tuesday, showing that 21 per cent of teenagers left school before Year 12.

In government schools, a quarter of students dropped out of high school last year, as rising rates of school refusal and mental health issues fuelled absenteeism, while a strong employment market lured teenagers into entry-level jobs and apprenticeships.

Barely half of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students finished Year 12.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said school attendance rates had been “heading in the wrong direction for years’’.

“If this doesn’t demonstrate why we need serious reform, I don’t know what does,’’ he said yesterday.

“Finishing high school is now more important than ever.

“Nine out of ten new jobs require a TAFE (technical and further education) qualification or a university degree.’’

Mr Clare said the Albanese government was working with state and territory governments to boost public funding for every school to 100 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS), although he did not place a timeline on the funding increase.

The SRS is an estimate of the money a school needs to meet its students’ educational needs, based on the school funding review led by business leader David Gonski in 2011.

Mr Clare, who visited primary school students benefiting from catch-up tutoring at Chullora Public School in Sydney’s west yesterday, said that funding was important, “but so is what it’s spent on, what it’s invested in.’’

The Productivity Commission data shows that the Year 12 retention rate across all schools dropped to 79 per cent – below the pre-pandemic rate of 82 per cent in 2019, and the rate of 80.7 per cent in 2013.

Only 56.4 per cent of First Nations students continued from Year 10 to Year 12 – down from 60 per cent in 2019 but slightly higher than the 2013 rate of 55.8.

Among non-Indigenous students, 80.4 per cent finished Year 12, down from 83.2 per cent in 2019 and 81.9 per cent in 2013.

Teenagers were most likely to drop out of government schools, with one in four failing to finish Year 21.

Retention rates dropped from 78 per cent in 2019 to 73.5 per cent last year – even lower than the rate of 76.7 per cent in 2013.

In private and Catholic schools, where parents pay tuition fees, the retention rate was stable at 87.2 per cent across all years.

The damning data coincides with a Senate inquiry into the growing trend of “school refusal’’.

Half of all Australian school students missed at least one day of classes every fortnight during 2022, with the 49.9 per cent attendance level well below the 75 per cent target.

The Australian Secondary Principals’ Association has told the Senate inquiry that the pandemic amplified already high levels of anxiety and mental health issues, as well as internet gaming addictions and online bullying, among teenagers.

“Schools have not had the resources or time to invest in the reflection and recovery phase post COVID-19 and are struggling to resource the interventions that are now required,’’ its submission states.

“Students from lower social economic families did not have the same access to remote learning through online technologies … this increased the learning gap.’’

Federal Education Department budget statements show that school attendance levels have been falling every year since 2018, attributing last year’s record low result on outbreaks of Covid-19 and influenza as well as flooding across parts of Australia.