ACARA news, June 2021

National Report on Schooling in Australia 2019 released

The National Report on Schooling in Australia for 2019 has been released today along with new data views, showing for the first time, longer-term trends and new presentations of data.

The report includes a summary of nationally agreed policy initiatives and a report on national key performance measures. 

For the first time, longer-term trends in progress against key performance measures are included in the report. The National Report on Schooling data portal has been updated with new presentations of data on schools and schooling to reflect the availability of this trend data.

• the national school enrolment rate for the 6–15-year-old population was 99.4 %.
• the average national attendance rate for students in Years 1-10 was 91.4%. Average attendance rates were higher for Years 1-6 than for Years 7-10. 
• at 81.5%, the average attendance rate for Indigenous students was 10.5 percentage points lower than for non-Indigenous students (92.0%). There was an increase in this gap of 0.3 percentage points in 2019. 
• nearly three-quarters (73.1%) of all Australian students in Years 1-10 attended school for at least 90% of school days. However, less than half (46.9%) of Indigenous students within this group met the 90% benchmark. 
• NAPLAN participation rates were over 95% for each of Years 3, 5 and 7 and the Year 9 participation rate was 92.6%. 

For the first time, longer-term trends, over 2009-2019 in most cases, in progress against key performance measures are included in the report, and the National Report on Schooling data portal has also been updated with new presentations of data on schools and schooling to reflect the availability of this trend data.

The new presentations are a time series for: 

• key performance measures for schooling in Australia
• student-teacher ratios
• school income and capital expenditure for government and non-government schools.
  

See the National Report on Schooling in Australia 2019