DESTINATIONS AND OUTCOMES OF TASMANIAN EARLY SCHOOL LEAVERS

INTRODUCTION

Completion of Year 12 schooling can have an impact on the social and economic outcomes of Australians throughout their life. Generally, young people who complete school and get their Year 12 certificate (or equivalent vocational education and training qualification) are more likely to transition into further study or training, get a job and have higher wages. Educational policy has also focused on improving outcomes for young people who are most at risk of leaving school, those who have already left school, and those who may need assistance making the transition into employment or further education and training.¹

For the first time, data from the Census of Population and Housing data has been integrated with Tasmanian government school enrolments and National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) data to provide a new dataset with enhanced information about the destinations and outcomes of early school leavers. This approach leverages more information from the combined datasets than is available from the individual datasets separately. Importantly, it allows us to look at the relationship between student achievement, post school outcomes and the impact of leaving school early. It also provides a new opportunity to understand the outcomes of early school leavers to a finer level of granularity than is typically able to be collected in State-based school leaver surveys.

This article demonstrates how the integrated dataset can enhance the evidence base for social, economic and educational policy in Australia, particularly in terms of understanding what happens to early school leavers post schooling and the relationship between student achievement while at school and post school outcomes.


DATA IN THIS ARTICLE

NAPLAN is completed by all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. This article uses 2008 Year 9 NAPLAN results for government school students in Tasmania combined with outcomes and socioeconomic characteristics data collected in the 2011 Census, using data integration techniques. For the purposes of this article, early school leavers are defined as young people who did not enrol in or complete Year 12 within five years of completing Year 9.

NAPLAN results for reading, writing and numeracy are generally shown in five bands. The second lowest band represents the national minimum standard, that is, the minimum performance standards in literacy and numeracy for a given year level. Students who are below the national minimum standards (Band 5 or below in Year 9) have not achieved the learning outcomes expected for their year level.² This article concentrates on reading scores, though the findings are very similar for writing and numeracy. Overall, 7% of Tasmanian government students with a 2008 Year 9 NAPLAN result were in reading Band 5 or below, with 20% in Band 6, 31% in Band 7, 25% in Band 8, 12% in Band 9, and 5% in Band 10.

For more detailed information about data sources, definitions and linkage methodologies, see the Explanatory Notes tab.


HOW DOES STUDENT PERFORMANCE RELATE TO YEAR 12 ENROLMENT?

Students with lower NAPLAN results are less likely to continue on to Year 12

While 39% of students left school before enrolling in Year 12, this rate varied depending on their 2008 Year 9 NAPLAN reading score. Students with lower NAPLAN reading scores were less likely to enrol in Year 12. Only 5% of students with the highest reading results (Band 10) left school before enrolling in Year 12, compared with 57% of those who scored below the national minimum standard (Band 5 or below).

Sex

Females were less likely than males to leave school prior to Year 12 regardless of their NAPLAN reading scores with less than half (46%) of females below the national minimum standard leaving, compared with 64% of males.

Indigenous status

Just over one in ten Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students (11%) scored below the national minimum standard for Year 9 reading in 2008 compared with 7% of non-Indigenous students. As with non-Indigenous students, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students were less likely to continue on to Year 12 if they had lower NAPLAN results. However, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students were less likely than non-Indigenous students to continue on to Year 12, even if their NAPLAN scores were similar. Amongst those students that had a NAPLAN reading score in Band 9 or above in Year 9, 40% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students left school before Year 12 compared with only 12% of non-Indigenous students.


Socioeconomic factors

Students living in more advantaged areas tended to have higher NAPLAN scores than those living in more disadvantaged areas.

Students from the most disadvantaged areas were more likely than those from the most advantaged areas to leave school before Year 12 across all except the lowest band of NAPLAN scores. For example, for students with scores in Band 6 for reading in Year 9, less than half (43%) of students from the most advantaged areas left before Year 12 compared with 58% of students from the most disadvantaged areas.



WHAT ROLE DOES STUDENT PERFORMANCE PLAY IN THE TRANSITION OF EARLY SCHOOL LEAVERS INTO EDUCATION, TRAINING AND EMPLOYMENT?

Early school leavers have lower engagement rates than Year 12 graduates

Students who graduated from Year 12 in 2010 were more likely to be engaged in work or study than their former classmates who left before completing Year 12. Early school leavers were around twice as likely as those who completed Year 12 in 2010 to not be engaged in work or study in 2011 (29% compared with 15%).

NAPLAN results are associated with engagement in work or study for early school leavers

Early school leavers that had higher Year 9 NAPLAN reading scores were more likely to be engaged in work or study.

Forty percent of early leavers with NAPLAN reading scores below the national minimum standard in Year 9 (in 2008) were not engaged in work or study in 2011, compared with 12% of those who were in Band 9 or above. Young women who had left school early were less likely to be engaged in work or study than their male counterparts.



WHAT ARE THE DESTINATIONS AND OUTCOMES FOR EARLY SCHOOL LEAVERS?

Higher NAPLAN scores usually relate to better employment outcomes for early school leavers

Most early leavers who were engaged in work or study were working rather than studying. In 2011, 49% of male early leavers were working full time along with 22% of female early leavers.

In general, better NAPLAN reading results in Year 9 in 2008 were associated with a higher proportion of early leavers in full-time work in 2011. However, the highest NAPLAN results (Band 9 or above) bucked this trend, as higher proportions of these early leavers were instead engaged in full-time study.

Of those that scored below the national minimum standard for reading when they were in Year 9 in 2008, only 32% of early school leavers were working full time in 2011 compared with 54% of those that scored at Band 8. Young men were more likely to be employed in full-time work in 2011, regardless of their reading NAPLAN score in Year 9, with 40% of males in Band 5 or below employed full time, compared with 15% of females. Almost half (47%) of the young women with NAPLAN reading scores below the national minimum standard in Year 9 were not engaged in work or study in 2011, while 19% were engaged in part-time employment only.

Of male early leavers in Band 8 for NAPLAN reading results, 66% were employed full time in 2011, compared with only 29% of females within the same NAPLAN band. Just over a quarter (28%) of female early leavers with relatively high NAPLAN results (Band 8) were not engaged in work or study in 2011, and 20% were engaged in part-time employment only.


About a quarter of early school leavers were enrolled in further study

Overall, almost a quarter (24%) of early school leavers were enrolled in further study (either full-time or part-time) with the vast majority in a Technical or Further Educational institution (including TAFE Colleges). More than twice as many students with a Year 9 NAPLAN reading score in Band 9 or above were continuing their studies compared with those who were below the national minimum standard (45% compared with 20%).

Female early school leavers are more likely to do unpaid carer work, whilst males are more likely to do volunteer work

About one in five early school leavers (21%) who were not engaged in work or study did some form of unpaid work in 2011, with:

• 10% volunteering their time to an organisation or group;
• 7% caring for someone else's child;
• 6% caring for their own child; and
• 4% providing unpaid assistance to someone with a disability.

Young women were much more likely than young men to report caring for their own or others' children, while males were more likely to report doing voluntary work for an organisation or group or providing unpaid assistance to a person with a disability.


LOOKING AHEAD

The Census provides a wealth of information on post school outcomes. Combining Census data with Tasmanian school enrolments data using data integration techniques allows the examination of outcomes by particular cohorts or groups of students without the additional burden, complexity and expense of having to conduct a separate data collection. The further integration of NAPLAN data provides additional insights into the role academic achievement plays in outcomes for different groups.

Using Tasmanian government school data, this article has demonstrated that student destinations and outcomes, including Year 12 retention, are related to student achievement in high school. The likelihood of staying on to Year 12 is closely related to Year 9 NAPLAN results. For those that left school early, Year 9 NAPLAN results were also strongly related to the likelihood of being engaged in work or study in the period directly after leaving school.

Longer term outcomes for early school leavers and the impact of school achievement and socioeconomic characteristics over time is a natural extension of this analysis and would be possible with additional years of NAPLAN and Census data.


ENDNOTES

1. Australian Government Department of Education, School to Work Transitions, <https://education.gov.au/school-work-transitions> (Accessed 15 July 2014)
2. Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, Standards
<http://www.nap.edu.au/results-and-reports/how-to-interpret/standards/standards.html> (Accessed 15 July, 2014)