Turning up a first step to success

The best that can be said about the latest national attendance data is that things are no worse than last year, but if NAPLAN results are to improve, more students must turn up to class.

In the midst of its MySchool update including this year’s NAPLAN scores for individual schools, the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) also released the new National Report on Schooling in Australia for 2025.
Over the past decade, New South Wales’ attendance rate has dropped from 94% to 90%.

The small (albeit growing) number of cases involving persistent school refusal aren’t the main driver of our attendance crisis. Rather, the data suggest a significant proportion of students overall are just attending less than they used to.

This can be found in the falling proportion of students who attend school 90% of the time; what’s known as the attendance level.

A 90% attendance rate is equivalent to roughly 20 school days off per year. But only 64% of NSW students are absent for less than that – down from 75% in 2019 and 80% 10 years ago.

We lack a clear understanding of the story behind this significant social shift. COVID and school closures exacerbated the falling attendance trend, especially in Victoria, but it didn’t create it. And the impacts are visible even in states where school closures were minimal.

NSW is not alone in having attendance targets, because students can’t learn unless they attend school. But the reverse is also true. When students don’t feel successful because of poor prior achievement or persistent classroom disruption, this drives a negative spiral that sees them ‘opt-out’ of attending.

Schools are under pressure to lift their attendance statistics and may resort to cheap ‘engagement’ tricks to get students in the door, which dilutes the time spent on meaningful learning and will only worsen the situation.

Instead, sustained efforts to lift instruction quality and early intervention will benefit all students’ connection to school, and mean fewer experience persistent struggles with their learning.

But this is not just about schools — families also have a role to play. Attitudes to school and children’s emotional resilience are shaped most meaningfully at home, and schools can only do so much if parents set a low bar.

Rebuilding the simple habit of turning up is the quiet reform that will decide whether any of the louder ones succeed. 

Trisha Jha is a Research Fellow in Education at the Centre for Independent Studies