NOTE

Schools, Australia (cat. no. 4221.0) is an annual publication. This release contains statistics for students, schools and staff as at the schools census date 6 August 2010. See About This Release for more information on the availability of data.


ABOUT THIS RELEASE

This publication contains statistics on students, schools, and staff involved in the provision or administration of primary and secondary education, in government and non-government schools for all Australian states and territories.

Students are classified by level and year of education, Indigenous status, full-time or part-time status, age at 1 July 2010, sex and category of school.

Schools are classified by level of education (primary, secondary, combined or special) and category of school (government, non-government) or (government, catholic, independent).

Staff are classified by category of school, sex and function. In-school Staff are further classified by level of education.

Also included are ratios of students to teaching staff and derived measures of retention, participation, continuation and progression.

Note that in 2010 the Schools, Australia, Preliminary publication (cat. no. 4220.0) has been discontinued. A staged release of the data will be adopted for this publication to ensure the ABS can meet stakeholder requirements for the data and is also consistent with legislation and policy governing the dissemination of data:

• Student data will be available from January 28;
• School and Staff data will be available from February 11; and
• Rates, analysis and summary PDF will be available from March 17.

Data cubes published here in pivot table format include time series with complete disaggregation available. The data cubes have been produced to show the last fifteen years of data where appropriate. Previous years are available in earlier publications of Schools, Australia (cat. no. 4221.0).

The data cubes for part-time student enrolments and full-time plus part-time student enrolments up until 2005 can be found in earlier publications of Schools, Australia (cat. no. 4221.0), however these data cubes are not available by age prior to 2006.

The PDF will incorporate tables that were previously available through the preliminary publication.


CHANGES AFFECTING THIS RELEASE

In 2010, Victoria implemented programs to increase identification of the Indigenous status of students and decrease the use of not-stated Indigenous status. This may affect comparisons of students by Indigenous status from 2010 to previous years.

In 2010, South Australia revised the South Australian Certificate of Education (SACE) which changed the prescribed minimum full-time load from previous years. In 2010 the revised SACE was introduced to Stage 1 (Year 11) and will be introduced at Stage 2 (Year 12) in 2011. This may affect comparisons of full-time and part-time student breakdowns with previous years.


GENERAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This publication draws extensively on information provided freely by state and territory departments with responsibility for school education and the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR). Their continued cooperation enables the ABS to publish a wide range of education statistics. Information received by the ABS is treated in strict confidence as required by the Census and Statistics Act, 1905 and in line with the Privacy Act, 1988.


SOURCE DATA

These data are sourced from the (non-finance) National Schools Statistics Collection (NSSC), which is a joint undertaking of the various state and territory departments of education, the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), and the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs (MCEECDYA). The scope of the collection is bound by the definitions of schools, students and staff which is available on request in the ABS Notes, Instructions and Tabulations (NIT) document. See also the Glossary of this publication.


ROUNDING AND CONFIDENTIALITY

Where estimates are rounded, discrepancies may occur between component items and their totals. Small values have been perturbed to protect confidentiality.


INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.