February 29, 2008

Embargoed 11.30 am (AEDT)

14/2008

There are more school students, more Indigenous students and more teachers in Australian schools than there were ten years ago, according to results from the 2007 Schools Census released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics today.

The schools snapshot found the main changes in a decade were:

• more students (more than 3.4 million school students in August 2007, up from 3.2 million in August 1997)
• an increase in teaching staff numbers (276,822 teachers, up from 227,469 teachers in 1997)
• an increase in indigenous students (147,000 in 2007, up from 96,807 in 1997)
• and a greater proportion of teachers were female (with a 3.5% increase since 1997, bringing the proportion of female teachers up to 70.6% of total teachers in 2007).

The retention rate of those students who went on to attend Year 12 increased from 72% in 1997 to 74% in 2007. Over the decade the total number of schools dropped by 28 (down from 9,609 schools in 1997).

There has been an increase in primary school enrolments with an average of 250 enrolments per school in 2007, compared to 210 enrolments in 1997. The overall number of schools providing primary education has fallen by 229 (2.9%) since 1997. At the same time the number of primary schools with enrolment sizes of 600 or more has risen from 314 to 492 (57%).

From 1997 to 2007, the number of full-time students attending government schools grew by 1.7% (from 2,230,052 to 2,268,377), while the number of students attending non-government schools increased by 21.9% (from 941,572 to 1,148,146).

Since 2002, there has been a 48% increase in Indigenous students in senior secondary schooling (21,546 Indigenous full-time students in Years 10-12 in 2007, up from 14,538 in 2002).

The 2007 annual snapshot also found:

• More than half (53%) of Year 12 students were female
• Over the decade, the proportion of 17 year-olds enrolled full-time increased from 61% to 63%
• Just over 40% of students attending school part-time in 2007 were in Year 12
• There was an average of 15.9 students per teacher (full-time equivalents) in primary schools, and 12.1 in secondary schools. A decade earlier the respective student/teacher ratios were 17.9 and 12.8
• Over the decade, the proportion of men who were school teachers (full-time equivalents) in primary schools declined from 23% to around 20%, and from 47% to 43% in secondary schools.

Further details are in Schools Australia, 2007 (cat. no. 4221.0).