ACARA has today released 2022 student attendance data on the interactive National Report on Schooling data portal. The national and jurisdictional data shows that school attendance in Semester 1 2022 declined due to the impact of the COVID-19 Omicron variant, high Influenza season outbreaks and floods experienced in certain regions across Australia at that time.
Overall, the 2022 national attendance rate is down 4.3 percentage points from 2021 while the student attendance level is down 21.3 percentage points on 2021. Attendance level measures the proportion of students in Years 1-10 whose attendance rate is equal to or greater than 90 per cent. A large proportion of students have attendance rates around 90 per cent, so small movements in rates for a large number of those students (from just above 90 per cent to just below) can result in large downward movements in attendance levels, which is the case with 2022 data.
Also updated today is data on participation in full-time education, training and employment of young people aged 15 to 24, including school students and those who have left school and have moved into tertiary study and/or the workforce.
The proportion of 20-24 year olds who have attained Year 12 or Certificate III or above as measured by the ABS Census of Population and Housing has increased 2 percentage points to 89.9 per cent in 2021 from 87.9 per cent in 2016.
The updated data includes key performance measures for:
Through the data portal, ACARA provides online access to national data on Australian schooling, including general statistics on enrolments and funding, and data on agreed key performance measures for schooling.
In most cases, the portal allows readers to view and download data at the national level, by state and territory, by school sector, by calendar year and other breakdowns such as gender and Indigenous status.
The data portal is updated twice a year with the most recent information on schooling. See the National Report on Schooling data portal.