New Measure – Data coming soon

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.

• The engagement of young South Australians has plausibly dropped in 2024 in comparison to previous years (2018 – 2023).
• Young South Australians were less likely to be fully engaged in work and/or study in 2024 than the national average of young people.
• The wide margins of error (MoE) in the plot are due to the relatively small number of young people surveyed in SA. To increase the accuracy in the estimate of fully engaged young people, more young people in each state must be surveyed.
• No other states are included in the graph above due to the large MoE in each, as a result of which we cannot distinguish between the states’ percentages of engagement.

Data Source: ABS, Survey of Education and Work

In 2021,

Click the legend to include other states

• There was no difference between SA and Australia in fully engaged young people with a disability (69.4% SA vs 69.7% nationally); however, SA had a higher percentage of partially engaged young people than nationally (10.9% SA vs 8.9% nationally).
• Vic have a higher percentage than SA of full engagement in work and/or study among young people with disabilities.
• Qld and NT had a lower percentage of fully engaged young people with a disability than SA, and NSW and Qld 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 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

Attendance Rates Across School Years

The line graph indicates that school attendance rates have declined since the COVID-19 pandemic (from 2021), followed by a partial recovery from 2023 to 2025. Attendance across Years 1-10 fell from around 92% in 2014-2015 to 85.6% in 2022, before improving to 89% in 2025. However, attendance has not returned to pre-COVID levels.

Attendance is consistently lower among secondary students (Years 7-10) compared to primary students (Years 1-6), indicating lower engagement in the middle and later years. This gap persists over time, with older students more likely to disengage from school.

Some general caveats should be considered when interpreting the data:

• Changes to methodology and reporting standards, including alignment to national standards, revisions to socio-educational advantage (SEA) quartile assignment, and updates by Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), may affect comparability over time.
• Caution is required when comparing attendance rates across school years due to differences in underlying student population counts.
• Attendance data for 2020 is not available; therefore, trends around this period should be interpreted with caution.
• Differences in state education systems, policies, and population characteristics mean that variations may not solely reflect performance differences.

Since Years 7–10 exhibit the lowest attendance rates, this year level is further disaggregated by state, gender, remoteness, and school sector, with additional analysis across Index of Community Socio-educational Advantage (ICSEA) and remoteness to examine patterns of disadvantage.

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

Attendance Rate Comparison Across School Years by Indigenous Status

School attendance trends from 2014 to 2025 show a clear and persistent disparity between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and non-Indigenous students across all year levels. Non-Indigenous students consistently demonstrate higher attendance rates, with a gap of roughly 10-15 percentage points maintained throughout the period.

Attendance is highest among primary students (Years 1-6) and declines in secondary years (Years 7-10), with the lowest rates observed among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander secondary students.

All groups experience a noticeable decline around 2021-2022, likely reflecting broader disruptions during that period, followed by a partial recovery from 2022 onwards. However, these rates have not fully returned to pre-2020 levels. This chart highlights enduring inequalities in attendance by both Indigenous status and year level, with secondary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students facing the greatest challenges.

As Years 7-10 exhibit the lowest attendance rates, subsequent analysis focuses on these year levels to further examine trends across student groups.

Attendance Rate Comparison Across Remoteness by Indigenous Status (Year 7-10)

As observed, attendance varies across remoteness areas. Major Cities consistently record the highest attendance rates, followed by Inner and Outer Regional areas, while Remote areas generally fall within a similar range rather than forming a clearly distinct category. Although Remote areas occasionally show similar or slightly higher attendance rates than Inner and Outer Regional areas, this does not indicate a structural advantage. Instead, the pattern reflects heterogeneity within Regional categories (particularly the lower performance of Outer Regional areas), smaller population sizes in Remote areas, and cohort composition effects, and may also reflect margins of error associated with aggregated estimates. In contrast, Very Remote areas consistently record the lowest attendance rates.

The gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous students varies across geolocations. The widest disparity is consistently observed in Very Remote areas, which may reflect structural inequalities in access to schooling, housing stability, and service provision. In 2025, for example, non-Indigenous attendance in Very Remote areas was 85.1%, compared to 49.2% for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. This disparity remains persistent across the time series, with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander attendance in Very Remote areas reaching the lowest observed level of 44.9% in 2021 across all groups and geolocations.

Knipe, S., & Bottrell, C. (2020) argue that very remote schools in Australia face persistent structural challenges affecting educational provision, including high staffing instability, limited curriculum breadth, and reduced access to support services. These schools also rely more heavily on less experienced teachers, which can impact teaching continuity and student outcomes. In addition, historical school closures and consolidations in remote areas have reduced local access to schooling, requiring greater travel distances and further disrupting consistent attendance and engagement.
The chart highlights that lower attendance among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students is further intensified by increasing remoteness, with secondary students in Very Remote areas facing the greatest challenges and the slowest recovery.

Attendance Rate Comparison Across School Sector by Indigenous Status (Year 7-10)

Attendance rates vary systematically by school sector for both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous students, with Government schools consistently recording the lowest attendance, followed by Catholic and Independent schools. While this pattern is consistent across all years, a persistent attendance gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous students is evident within each sector.

This gap is largest in Government schools, where differences of approximately 15-17 percentage points are observed in recent years, and smaller but still present in Catholic and Independent sectors. Although non-government schools achieve higher attendance overall, they do not eliminate the disparity, indicating that underlying structural inequalities extend beyond sector differences. These patterns are largely driven by differences in student composition, with Government schools serving a higher proportion of students from disadvantaged and remote communities, where attendance barriers are more pronounced.

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

Background:

In ACARA, Attendance rate is defined as the number of actual full-time equivalent student-days attended by full-time students in Years 1-10 as a percentage of the total number of possible student-days attended over the period. For higher year levels, ACARA only records data for students within compulsory schooling age. To better understand student engagement at the secondary level, particularly beyond attendance, the Engagement in work and/or study measure is used to provide insight into whether young people are participating in education, training, or employment pathways.

The data are presented by state, ICSEA (Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage) and remoteness, allowing comparisons across different geographic groups.

The Index of Community Socio-educational Advantage (ICSEA) is a scale of socio educational advantage that is calculated for each school. ICSEA values are calculated on a scale which has a median of 1000 and a standard deviation of 100. ICSEA values typically range from approximately 500 (representing schools with extremely disadvantaged student backgrounds) to about 1300 (representing schools with extremely advantaged student backgrounds).

Remoteness is classified using the ABS Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) and the Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia Plus (ARIA+), which measure access to services based on geographic location. Areas are grouped into five categories: Major Cities, Inner Regional, Outer Regional, Remote, and Very Remote. ARIA+ is derived by measuring road distance from various populated locations to five categories of service centre, using population as a proxy measure for service availability. For more information on how remoteness is distributed across South Australia, view the map.

Rationale:

All children and young people aged 6-16 years must be enrolled at a school and participate in education. Regular school attendance assists students to maximise their full potential and to actively participate and engage in their learning. Everyday matters in the life of a child or young person. Each day of school attendance may have a positive effect on development and future success. As early as preschool, regular absences may be a predictor of later school attendance patterns.

Long-term studies have shown that not completing school may be linked to poor physical and mental health, poverty and involvement with the justice system. Children and young people who do not attend school regularly may miss out on planned learning experiences, sequences of instruction and class participation. The impact of this may be compounded with each absence. It may also be more difficult to build positive relationships with others.

• The percentage of SACE completions peaked in 2021 at 76.4%.
• Female students have a higher percentage of SACE completion than male students.
• The SACE completion gaps between female and male students was the lowest in 2017 at 8.96%, biggest gap in 2014 at 13.6% and in the current year there was a gap of 10.7%.
• In 2023, 71.5% of SA students completed SACE (77% of female students completed in comparison to 66.3% of male students).

Data Source: Data Agreement between CDC and SACE Board

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) report a higher percentage of Year 12 certification rate for SA (88.8% in 2022 compared to 69.6% of SA students completing SACE reported above). The ACARA definition of Year 12 completion includes students who complete Senior Secondary Certificate (SACE for SA students) or equivalent, i.e vocational education and training (VET) and certificate lll courses. However, ACARA’s reported rates are subject to some notable caveats, including a significant risk of double counting. For example, students who complete both VET qualifications and SACE may be counted twice, inflating the overall completion rate.