An individual who is fully engaged in work and/or study is either working full-time, studying full-time, or both working and studying. Individuals who are working or studying part-time are classified as partially engaged.

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• The engagement of young Aboriginal South Australians has plausibly dropped in 2021 in comparison to 2016 (68% vs 65% in 2016 and 2021, respectively).
• Young South Australians were as likely to be fully engaged in work and/or study in 2021 as young people nation-wide.
• WA and NT had a lower percentage of fully engaged young people than SA in both census years.

In 2021,

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• There was no difference between SA and Australia in fully and partially engaged Aboriginal young people with a disability.
• NT had a lower percentage of fully engaged young people with a disability than SA, and NSW had a lower percentage of partially engaged.

Note on the above plot: The Census’ definition of disability is “…those needing assistance in their day to day lives in one or more of the three core activity areas of self-care, mobility and communication.” This definition of disability is quite deficient as it excludes individuals with moderate or mild limitations who also need assistance in one or more of the three core activity areas. Due to this restrictive definition, no analysis can be performed to determine how different limitations affect engagement in working and/or studying.

Data Source: ABS, Census

Student attendance at school can be measured in multiple ways:

• Attendance rate: the number of actual full-time equivalent student-days attended by full-time students in Year 1 to Year 10 in Semester 1 as a percentage of the total number of possible student-days attended in Semester 1.
• Attendance level: the proportion of full-time students in Year 1 to Year 10 whose attendance rate in Semester 1 is equal to, or greater than, 90%.
• Actual Retention rate: calculated by taking the count of students enrolled in the public education system at one point in time and finding the proportion of these same students still enrolled at a later point in time.
• Apparent retention rate: Different to ‘Actual retention rate’ as the same individual students are not tracked over time, but instead show the net change in enrolments between two points in time.

The framework reports on the attendance level.

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• All states and territories have recorded a evident drop in attendance since COVID.
• SA has subceeded the national average in attendance level by 4-6% since 2015.
• The attendance level for all states and territories was declining slowly between 2015 and 2019, before COVID.
• In 2023, the attendance level for SA Aboriginal students was 31.7% in comparison to the national average of 36.4%.
• SA has a higher percentage of attendance level in comparison with NT and WA since 2015.

Notes:
– School attendance data for 2020 has not been published due to inconsistencies in the data as a result of the varying health advice and schooling arrangements across the country in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
– Comparison should not be made between the states in 2021 due to different COVID lockdowns and state government strategies.

In 2023:

• Aboriginal students who attend schools in very remote areas of SA had a starkly lower attendance level than Aboriginal individuals from all other SA locations: 12% for students from very remote schools vs 34% from metropolitan schools.
• Independent and Catholic schools had a higher attendance level in comparison to government schools: 48% and 39% vs 30%, respectively.

• This plot illustrates the decrease in attendance level for Aboriginal students attending high school (Years 7-10) compared to primary school (Years 1-6).
• The largest proportional drops in attendance level between primary and high school occur in metropolitan and regional areas. Nonetheless, very remote areas have the lowest attendance level in all locations in SA.

• This plot illustrates the percentage of attendance level across the school sectors, with the addition of the same pattern emerging that more Aboriginal students attend primary school years (Years 1-6) than high school years (Years 7-10).
• The difference between primary and secondary school attendance level is lesser at independent schools compared to government schools.

Data Source: Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA)

• There have been a major increase in achieving SACE completions, 27% in 2014 vs 38% in 2023, peaked in 2021 at 41.4%
• In 2023, 37.8% of SA Aboriginal students completed SACE.

Data Source: Data Agreement between CDC and SACE Board