By Rydr Tracy
For years, Australian schools have relied on absence and behaviour data as the primary signal that a student is disengaging. A child stops showing up, and then we act. But by that point, the warning signs have been present for months, sometimes years. New national data suggests we have been looking in the wrong place and starting far too late.
The first findings from the Australian Education Engagement Taskforce (EET), drawing on responses from approximately 16,000 students across 43 schools in five states and territories, reveal something that many teachers and school leaders already sense instinctively: students disengage emotionally and cognitively long before they disengage physically. But are our systems designed to see this disengagement?
The EET data paints a striking picture. Among girls, average engagement scores fall from 7.9 out of 10 in Year 7 to just 6.4 by Year 9, a decline of more than one and a half points in roughly two years. The share of girls reporting low engagement nearly triples over that same period, from 9 per cent in Year 7 to 29 per cent by Year 9. Longitudinal tracking of the same students confirms this is not a cohort effect: the same girls who were engaged in Year 7 are measurably less so four months into Year 8.
This matters because engagement, as measured here, is not simply about attitude or enthusiasm. It encompasses whether students believe school is relevant to them, whether they feel they belong, whether they feel safe, and whether they are putting effort in. These dimensions — cognitive, emotional and behavioural — together form a far richer picture of how a young person is experiencing school than any attendance and behaviour data can provide.
The findings for girls are especially telling. By Year 12, 44 per cent of girls report low school confidence — meaning they worry about going to school — compared to 23 per cent of boys. That gap first opens in Year 8. This indicates a slow erosion of confidence, with some figures suggesting this could begin as early as Year 3 before accelerating through high school.
The picture for boys is different but equally concerning. Their enjoyment of school begins declining in primary school, with average scores falling from 6.8 in Year 3 to 5.7 by Year 5. They also report lower perceptions of safety in the middle secondary years.
So, what does this mean in practice for school leaders and educators? First, it means we need to measure what we value, not value what we measure. Attendance is a lag indicator. By the time a student is regularly absent, the emotional disconnection that preceded has already done significant damage to their sense of self as a learner. Waiting for absence data to trigger a response is responding too late.
Second, it means the early years of secondary school deserve far greater attention as a critical intervention window. The Year 6 to Year 7 period sets patterns of engagement that shape the rest of a student’s schooling experience.
Third, the gendered nature of these patterns demands a gendered response. The confidence gap that opens for girls in Year 8 and widens through to Year 12 is not going to be addressed by whole-school programs alone. This issue requires nuanced, responsive approaches that take seriously the specific ways girls experience belonging, safety and relevance in school environments.
None of this is news to the teachers and school leaders who have been watching these patterns play out in classrooms for years. What is new is that we now have systematic, nationally benchmarked data to confirm what experience has long suggested — and to make the invisible visible at the scale needed to drive system-level change.
Australian schools are full of dedicated professionals doing remarkable work under significant pressure. They deserve to be empowered with better information, earlier, so that effort can be directed where it will have the greatest impact. The data is now available. The question is how prepared we are to act on it.
Rydr Tracy is the Director of Education at Social Ventures Australia (SVA) and member of the Australian Education Engagement Taskforce. He is a specialist in evidence-informed practice in educational innovation, with a career focus on strategic change that improves student outcomes.