Wednesday, 19 February 2025

School retention rates

Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:25): (1431) My adjournment tonight is for the Minister for Education, and the action I seek is for the minister to take action to address the appalling situation in our schools at present where student grades are at a 10-year low, with more than two in 10 students failing to continue through to year 12, only one in four students completing year 12 and 15 per cent of high school students failing to turn up to school each day. That information came from the Financial Review. The issues that are affecting attendance rates include bullying, stress and anxiety in Victorian schools, and we now have record low attendance rates. These problems are aligned with the fact that schools are stretched, with plunging staff shortages and inadequate resources. According to the Herald Sun, the Productivity Commission’s recent report of last week shows that overall 58 per cent of Victorian state school students in 2024 from years one to 10 only attended school at least 90 per cent of the time – that is right, only attending at least 90 per cent of the time. This indicates that students have missed more than one day of school a week, which is up from a 49 per cent rate two years ago.

Minister, students in low socio-economic areas such as many parts of the South-Eastern Metropolitan Region are even worse off, because when they do not keep up their schooling their mental health is exacerbated and their job prospects are diminished. Poverty and disadvantage are highly correlated to poor attendance and dropping out before year 12, according to Nigel Howard, lecturer in education for the University of South Australia. He also went on to say that half of all people who go on to develop serious mental illness in later life dropped out of high school. The report shows that only 65 per cent of the 65,000 Victorians students who left school in 2023 were engaged in work or study or a combination of both in 2024. That is 35 per cent of the 65,000 Victorian students that are not engaged in work or study. That is more than 20,000-plus Victorians.

Victoria’s figures show that our state schools had the second-lowest Commonwealth and state expenditure per student, with general expenditure being $24,447 per student, but with the Victorian government only committing $19,628 per state school student – also the second-lowest contribution Australia-wide. Keeping our children in government schools shows a high retention problem, and since 2017 public school retention rates in Victoria have dropped from 79.8 per cent in 2017 to just 73 per cent of public school students completing year 12. This is a stark comparison to the nearly 90 per cent non-government school retention rate of 87.2.

The government needs to address education in our state immediately because our children are suffering. We are sick of glib reports that all is well. All is not well in Victorian state education. When we look at attendance rates of the children, these are very real problems. Minister, I ask you to show me that the government is doing something to address this very real and concerning problem.