School Attendance Rate in Australia Falls Below 50% - Reports

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th January, 2023) School attendance across Australia has fallen below 50% in 2022, with two million students skipping more than 10% of classes because of the pandemic or just a refusal to go to school, Australian media reported on Wednesday.

"Last year when we were supposedly out of lockdowns, the attendance levels fell to 50%, so half the children in schools, which is two million kids, missed 1 in 10 school days. That is a real concern," Natasha Bita, education editor at The Australian newspaper, was quoted as saying by Sky news.

Bita said that the situation was alarming and was sparked by a combination of illness and a rising trend of school refusal.

"It's very easy to blame lazy parenting for this, but it's a very real phenomenon, and it's worsened over COVID during the pandemic and the lockdowns," she was quoted as saying by Sky News.

Bita noted that a lack of discipline was to blame for the sad state of education in Australia as much as the lockdowns.