There are two measures for judging student attendance in Australia, student attendance rate is the percentage of students who are in school on any given day and student attendance level is the percentage of students who attend school more than 90%.
The student attendance rate was 90% in 2014 and has been declining steadily over the past nine years to 86% in 2022. This has continued to get worse for isolated schools with their student attendance rate dropping up to 10% in the same time period. Student attendance level in Australia has followed a similar trajectory over the past decade with eight in every ten students in 2014 attending school over 90% of the time, in 2022 just five in every ten student attended to that level.
How student attendance can be improved?
Looking into the alarming rise in student absence, it needs to be tackled for schools to improve their student development. Student attendance taking a hit in Australia can be partially blamed on Covid-19 but it has not rebounded efficiently since this time. It is very important for procedures on campus to run as smoothly as possible to improve student attendance. The use of data-driven analytics has been improved in education institutions, this can be used to reduce the absence in education.
Developing a better institution environment
There has to be a strategy to tackle the issues with on campus attendance, universities in Australia have been impacted further since the drop in attendance in 2020 due to Covid-19. Look to include blended learning to help improve student attendance. It is vital to adapt to different learning techniques which have been adopted due to changing environments. Unfortunately there is a lot of trouble with syncing learning methods with public schools as they struggle to retain their students.
“Every day counts and there is no ‘safe’ threshold for absences”
Hancock et al., 2013Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership
The benefits of boosting student attendance
Interaction in education institutions is encouraged by students being present on a day to day basis, schools must look to inspire students to attend regularly. High attendance is key to student success, the evolution education is ever changing it is important for universities and schools to remain in the loop with new technology.
As a result education institutions should look to constantly improve campus technologies to tackle the issues with student attendance which is plummeting in Australia.
