Education

In 2022

• the number of children aged 4 or 5 years old enrolled in a preschool program was 334,440, a 1.3% decrease compared with 2021
• the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children aged 4 or 5 years old enrolled in a preschool program was 21,516, which was 2.7% higher than in 2021
• more than two-thirds (68%) of children enrolled in a preschool program paid $4 or less per hour for preschool programs after subsidies were deducted

In Australia in 2022:

• 4,042,512 students were enrolled in 9,614 schools.
• the Year 7/8 to 12 full-time apparent retention rate was 80.5%.
• the average student to teaching staff ratio for all schools was 13.1 students to one teacher.
• the annual growth rate for school enrolments was 0.3% (11,795 students) the lowest growth rate since both full-time and part-time students were included in this publication (1995).

Educational attendance

• 484,185 people were attending preschool. 
• 2,075,224 people were attending primary school. 
• 1,629,624 people were attending secondary school. 
• 1,185,450 people were attending university or other higher education. 
• 601,901 people were attending vocational education (including TAFE and private training providers).

Qualifications

• Over 11 million (11,511,655) people in Australia reported having a non-school (vocational or tertiary) qualification, a 19.8 per cent increase since 2016.
• 5.5 million people (5,464,631) reported having a bachelor degree or higher, a 30.7 per cent increase since 2016.
• 4 million people (3,962,732) reported having certificate I to IV, a 10.6 per cent increase since 2016.
• The most common field of study for non-school qualifications was Business and Management (1,144,084 people), followed by Teacher Education (836,410), and Nursing (608,276).
• The fastest growing qualifications were Security Science, now 5,805 people qualified (up 460 per cent since 2016), followed by Artificial Intelligence, now 630 people (up 204 per cent), and Southern Asian Languages, now 670 people (up 123 per cent).

Of people aged 15-74:

• 63% had a non-school qualification. 
• 79% with a non-school qualification, and 58% without, were employed.
• 85% who finished a non-school qualification in 2021 were employed in 2022.

Of those aged 15-24:

• 63% were currently studying.
• 8% were not engaged in any work or study.

• 42% of Australians aged 15-74 years had participated in learning in the last 12 months (7.8 million people).
• One in five (21%) were studying for a formal qualification.
• Just under a quarter (23%) did work-related training.
• Online learning was the most common way work-related training was delivered: rates more than doubled from 19% in 2016-17 to 55% in 2020-21.

• In 2018-19, 63% of Australians aged 15-64 had a non-school qualification.
• 24% of people had multiple qualifications.
• 83% of people with a qualification had one that was relevant to their job.
• 2.6 million people (16%) had at least one incomplete qualification.

Information on children aged 0-12 years and their families, including use of formal and informal care