Study shows why kids drop out of school

The most powerful indicators that young people were more likely to not complete year 12 included poor school attendance, low maths and English scores, not liking school and having health or mental health issues.

The survey of 2000 young people over three years from 2021 to 2023 found that nearly three in five students who attended school in year 9 less than 70 per cent of the time did not finish year 12. This compared with one in five who had attendance rates of over 90 per cent in year 9.

Around 45 per cent of students who received a D or E grade in year 9 left early, compared with 21 per cent of students who received an A, B or C grade.

Importantly, 40 per cent of students who could not recall receiving careers advice left early, compared with 13 per cent who remembered speaking to a careers counsellor.

Ms Hampshire said high quality, nuanced and up-to-date careers advice that understood new and emerging jobs was a critical piece in the puzzle of keeping children in school to the end.

“Young people have told us they want individualised career support starting with their interests, goals, aspirations and what they’re good at,” Ms Hampshire said. However, support needed to be diverse and not too narrow, “particularly for young people who aren’t sure about what they want to do”.

“One young person said to us having a goal is not enough. They talked about needing help to both identify a goal post-school but also a plan on how to get there.”

It was the advice of a careers counsellor, who took a lot of interest in Cindy Nguyen and her academic abilities and passions, that resulted in her enrolling in mechanical engineering at Monash University where she is now in second year.

Ms Nguyen, 19, says she was good at maths and science at school, but was also deeply involved in the creative arts.

“We got a lot of career advice at school and spoke to plenty of people who helped us choose what we wanted to do,” she said. “They helped me narrow it down to engineering, and then I had to narrow it down. I came across the idea of building prosthetics. It’s a new and growing field and I thought it looked really interesting.”

The survey found that being male, from an English-speaking background (as opposed to migrant families, which tend to have a keen education focus), being Indigenous, having a health or mental health condition and living in a regional areas were all factors that put young people at risk of leaving school before completion.

Ms Hampshire said schools should use the data and evidence at their disposal to intervene earlier if children were struggling academically or not attending enough.

She said negotiations under way between the federal, state and territory governments over a new funding agreement offered a significant opportunity to ensure higher levels of school completion were integrated into the reform process.