New national study surfaces hidden early warning signs of Australian student disengagement

First findings from the Education Engagement Taskforce, drawing on 16,000 student responses across five states and territories, show warning signs of disengagement long before they appear in absence data, including a sharp engagement cliff between Year 7 and 9.

Sydney, Thursday 21 May 2026: A new study released today by the Australian Education Engagement Taskforce (EET) reveals new early warning signs of student disengagement, including how they feel about school, their relationships and their motivation to learn.

The EET is a cross-sector national partnership seeking to make engagement signals more visible for school leaders so insight-led prevention can take place. It is run by SVA, The Engagement Platform (TEP),  a tool for measuring school stakeholder engagement, and a steering group of academics, schools and education leaders across five states and territories.

Despite being one of the most pressing issues facing Australian schools today, disengagement is currently largely measured by student absence data. However, the study reveals that engagement-related warning signs appear much earlier than absence data indicates. The EET measures engagement through the levels of commitment, involvement and emotional investment students have with school. This is broken down into cognitive engagement (beliefs, value and agency), emotional engagement (relationships, belonging, inclusion and enjoyment) and behavioural engagement (effort and actions).

Across two census windows in November 2025 and March 2026, TEP gathered engagement data from approximately 16,000 students in 43 schools across Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, the Australian Capital Territory and Western Australia.

The most striking pattern in this first wave of Australian data is what the Taskforce describes as an engagement decline in the early years of secondary school, particularly among girls. The Australian patterns broadly track TEP’s findings in England, where engagement dips have been shown to act as a lead indicator of a decline in attendance and attainment ahead of persistent absence.

The new study, under the research direction of Professor John Jerrim, highlights a number of key findings:

A sharp engagement decline for girls in early secondary school

• Average headline engagement (out of 10) among girls falls from 7.9 in Year 7, to 6.9 in Year 8, and 6.4 in Year 9.
• The share of girls reporting low engagement (scoring 5 out of 10 or below) rises from 9% in Year 7 to 21% in Year 8 and 29% in Year 9.
• Longitudinal data tracking the same female students confirms the pattern: average engagement scores for those moving from Year 7 to Year 8 fell by 0.4 points within four months.

Gender gaps in school confidence, enjoyment and safety

• As a sub-domain of engagement, the TEP survey captures school confidence, which measures whether young people worry about going to school. By Year 12, 44% of girls report low school confidence, compared to 23% of boys, a gap of over 20%. This gap opens in Year 8 and widens through the senior secondary years.
• The dataset also tracks enjoyment of school. For boys, enjoyment levels start falling away in primary school, with average enjoyment figures falling from 6.8 (out of 10) in Year 3 to 5.7 in Year 5.
• Boys also report notably lower perceptions of safety in Years 8 and 9 (around 7.0 out of 10) than male peers in Year 7 and Year 10 (around 7.75 out of 10), which is something which will be investigated more deeply in further rounds of data collection.

The TEP methodology, which is underpinned by an academically validated measurement framework, is already being deployed at scale in England, where the importance of engagement measurement in schools has been recognised as a centrepiece in the latest UK education reforms.

Jonny Sobczyk Boddington, Founder and Executive Director at TEP, said:

“The patterns emerging in the Australian dataset echo what we have seen at scale in England, that the early years of secondary school are a critical window, and that timely data on how students are experiencing school gives leaders the chance to intervene before disengagement turns into absence or falling attainment. We know that engagement data quickly becomes a powerful lever in the school improvement toolkit and we are delighted to be equipping Australian school leaders with these actionable insights.”

James Toomey, CEO, SVA, said:

“At SVA, we focus on shifting systems so that more people and communities can thrive. It takes time, rigour and tenacity to see the impact of the changes we are working towards. And importantly, it takes a network of people and partners brave enough to try something different. ImpactEd is shaping solutions in the classroom to tackle disengagement early, helping more Australian kids stay at school and thrive.”

Clayton Reedie, Director of Educational Leadership, Campbelltown Principals Network, said:

“Young people are growing up in a very complex world. Our schools have a lot of great strategies in place to support students to get the most out of their learning. Any additional information that we can get, that helps us to understand what might be stopping kids from engaging with their learning – that’s really valuable.”

“We now have the right people with the right information at the right time.”

The Education Engagement Taskforce is now inviting more Australian schools and system leaders to join the next census window, to build the national dataset and contribute to strengthening benchmarks for schools. Participating schools receive a detailed report on their own students’ engagement, benchmarked against the wider Australian cohort, and the ability to track change over time.

The full report can be downloaded here.
Schools interested in joining the cohort should contact [email protected] or [email protected].