Education warnings as attendance falls to pandemic lows

ABC NEWS (Australia)

School attendance rates are at record lows in public, private, and catholic schools despite a post pandemic uplift. Students are missing class for sickness and unjustified reasons. Educators and experts are warning pupils will struggle to catch up.

Transcript

00:00Let's say you missed one day of fortnight, that's like a month of school by the end of

00:06the year, and that can add up over time.

00:09I think what we need to ensure is that parents and students see the value in being at school,

00:14and that it's a place where they feel safe to come and learn, and that they can also

00:18feel that they're learning from their peers in a collaborative way, as well as just gaining

00:23the knowledge from the teacher.

00:24We know that students can gain knowledge from AI or watching YouTube videos, but it's not

00:29the same as being in the environment where they can be supported by teachers and their

00:34peers to learn both social skills as well as the knowledge required to be members of

00:39society and part of our jobs in the future.

00:44There's obviously some basic skills that we learn when we're in primary school and even

00:48into early secondary school, particularly around spatial concepts or number, and things

00:53we learn later in mathematics build on that, so the knowledge is spiralling and we continue

00:59to learn and continue to build our knowledge, and once there's gaps in that, it's very hard

01:03for teachers to work to fill those gaps, and we knew that coming out of COVID, that students

01:09would be coming to school with some larger gaps in their knowledge, and many schools

01:14did put support teachers in place to help with that.

01:18But if you're away for, say, the first lesson of a series where the teacher's really unpacking

01:22the concept and there's time for you to ask questions, if you miss that, you're always

01:28going to feel like you're playing catch-up, and then that in turn affects students' feeling

01:32towards the subject and towards themselves as learners, their self-efficacy, as we would

01:37call it.

01:38And so in mathematics, it's a subject that not everybody loves.

01:41We are, you know, fingers crossed we can help everyone to see the relevance of mathematics,

01:45but if students already are feeling a little bit of a disconnect with the subject, we need

01:50to do what we can to help them understand that being there every day is really going

01:55to help them and support them in their learning for the future.

01:58In essence, teachers need support.

02:00We know that mental health needs of our students have increased since COVID, and so having

02:04more support teachers in the classroom, and also perhaps full-time psychologists or sociologists

02:10in the schools that most schools don't have, they don't have a full-time counsellor, having

02:14those support wellbeing needs for students and for teachers will allow the teachers to

02:19then build the rapport in the classroom with the students, because student engagement is

02:24number one.

02:25It doesn't matter how great you are as a teacher, if you haven't got that engagement and students

02:29don't feel engaged to come to school and remain in school, then it doesn't matter.

02:34So trying to encourage the students to come, if the support is there, I guess from a political

02:40or from a sector perspective, the teachers can then do their job of building relationships

02:45with the students to help them learn in the classroom.

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