{"id":67297,"date":"2023-02-27T00:39:07","date_gmt":"2023-02-27T05:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=67297"},"modified":"2023-02-27T00:39:07","modified_gmt":"2023-02-27T05:39:07","slug":"school-attendance-rates-are-dropping-we-need-to-ask-students-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/school-attendance-rates-are-dropping-we-need-to-ask-students-why\/","title":{"rendered":"School attendance rates are dropping. We need to ask students why"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Today federal and state education ministers are meeting to talk about school attendance. Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has repeatedly flagged this as a key concern. As he told Channel 7\u2019s Sunrise last week:
\nWe\u2019ve seen attendance at schools drop over the last ten years amongst boys and girls from five-year-olds to 15-year-olds. Whenever I ask the question to the experts, why are we seeing attendance rates drop, I get crickets. That\u2019s not good enough.<\/em><\/p>\n

We are former teachers who\u00a0research student disengagement<\/a>\u00a0from school. To fully understand and address this issue, we need to speak to students themselves.<\/p>\n

What is happening with school attendance?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

There are two ways Australia\u00a0measures school attendance<\/a>. These are the attendance rate and the attendance level.<\/p>\n

The attendance rate is the average number of students at school on any day. This has been declining steadily from 90% in 2014 to 86% in 2022. The further the school is from a major city, the more marked the decline is. There has been a 10% drop for remote schools.<\/p>\n

The attendance level is the percentage of students who are attending for more than 90% of the time. This has also been dropping steadily.<\/p>\n

In 2014 eight out of every ten students were attending school for more than 90% of the time. In 2022 only five in ten students were attending at that rate. This suggests there has been a marked increase in the number of students who are missing at least a week of school a year.<\/p>\n

Attendance levels are important because if students are missing a significant chunk of lessons, they are not fully engaged in school. More importantly the empty desks keep changing as different students are absent on different days. Teachers are always playing catch-up and students get into a vicious cycle of missing out and not engaging because they have missed out.<\/p>\n

Why is this happening?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

These indicators are only a blunt measure. We don\u2019t know the overall patterns of those who could be missing for longer periods and why this is so.<\/p>\n

Parents and schools are certainly reporting increasing concerns about school refusal or avoidance (when a child regularly fails to attend class) since COVID. The Senate is conducting an\u00a0inquiry<\/a>\u00a0into the issue, with a report due in March.<\/p>\n

But if it was only a COVID response we would expect Victoria with the longest lockdowns would fare worst. However, this isn\u2019t the case: Victoria is the only state where government school attendance level is above 50%.<\/p>\n

The decline in attendance also pre-dates COVID.<\/p>\n

Our research<\/strong><\/h4>\n

One way to address this issue is to talk to the students themselves, to understand what is going on in their lives, both at school and beyond it.<\/p>\n

As teachers, we regularly spoke to and worked with students in our schools to reform currriculum and structures to\u00a0build belonging and connectedness<\/a>\u00a0to school. As part of our\u00a0wider research<\/a>\u00a0into alternative and new school designs, we talked to students from the Catholic and independent sectors in South Australia as well as students who attended new\u00a0flexible schools<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What engaged and disengaged students say<\/strong><\/h4>\n

When we talk to students who are engaged in school, they tell us how they fit in, how good they feel about fitting in and how they see themselves staying until the end of their schooling.<\/p>\n

They believe their school will support them through to the senior years, they are confident their school will guide them to achieve their career goals, and they are confident their school will help them if they experience difficulties. Looking back on her primary years Lindsay* spoke about the feeling of safety and community:
\nMy primary school only had about 120 kids. It was lovely community school; I grew up with everyone. I know everyone\u2019s parents, if I was sick, I knew that like a friends parents would come over to pick me up from school [\u2026].<\/em><\/p>\n

When we\u00a0talk to young people<\/a>\u00a0who are disengaging or detached from school (meaning they no longer go at all), they tell us they did not feel as though they fitted into school. This can be socially, academically, or a belief the work they are doing at school does not connect with the work they see themselves doing in the future.<\/p>\n

They tell us they could not see themselves staying on, they tell us they could not see how their learning was relevant to them and they tell us they didn\u2019t believe their school would (or did) support them as they faced difficulties. They tell us of the disconnect between their lives at home and in the community and their experience of school.<\/p>\n

Looking back on his early high school in a mainstream school Axel told us:
\nLet\u2019s say that they put me in the wrong classes \u2013 classes that I didn\u2019t want to do I wasn\u2019t interested in. The more classes they put me in that I wasn\u2019t interested in the more it just deterred me from wanting to go to school.<\/em><\/p>\n

Why are students disengaging?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Another way to look at this issue is to look at how education policy has changed over the same period. Over the last decade, with the advent of NAPLAN, testing has become much more important in Australian schools.<\/p>\n

This is part of a\u00a0global trend<\/a>\u00a0where standardised tests are used as a measure of accountability in education systems. As we have seen with\u00a0last week\u2019s My School update<\/a>, the results are published and encourage national and even international competition.<\/p>\n

This cannot help but narrow what schools concentrate on and what kind of student they value, if they want to be seen as a \u201csuccessful\u201d school.<\/p>\n

These standardised measures leave little room for\u00a0principals<\/a>\u00a0and schools to cater for the needs of different communities and individual students, who will all have different strengths, weaknesses and interests.<\/p>\n

Schools need to be able to focus on more than tests<\/strong><\/h4>\n

School attendance is as complex issue, made more complex by the pandemic.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0research shows<\/a>\u00a0if schools are able tailor learning and the day-to-day experience of school to meet the diverse needs of their students, this will help more young people feel like they belong at school. And this will increase the chances they will turn up and stay.<\/p>\n

Author Bios:<\/strong> Nigel Howard is a Research Associate and Andrew Bills is a Researcher into Educational Leadership and Policy both at Flinders University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today federal and state education ministers are meeting to talk about school attendance. Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has repeatedly flagged this as a key concern. As he told Channel 7\u2019s Sunrise last week: We\u2019ve seen attendance at schools drop over the last ten years amongst boys and girls from five-year-olds to 15-year-olds. Whenever I […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15645],"tags":[434136],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-67297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","tag-school-attendance"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSchool attendance rates are dropping. 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