South Australia has shown the second highest proportion of early childhood education and care services exceeding the National Quality Standard (NQS) in the country, with 36% of SA services receiving a rating of exceeding the Australian average of 22%.

The data, as part of the Productivity Commission’s annual Report on Government Services (RoGS), indicates the high quality of early childhood education and care in SA through investments in quality services and reforms.

This includes funding in long day care in South Australia with a $1.9 billion investment in three-year-old preschool. As well as funding for more highly qualified staff in long day care centres, professional development and resources, and coaching for services rated as ‘Working Towards’ the NQS.

The latest data also showed that South Australia recorded the second highest attendance rate for full time secondary students in the nation.

In 2024, the attendance rate for students in years 7 to 10 at public schools was 84.3%, above the national average of 83.4%.

South Australian public schools have shown attendance improvement for the third year in a row, following the establishment of the department’s Attendance Directorate last year to address the challenges of student absences.

This team includes additional senior social workers to address complex cases of non-attendance, an attendance outreach team working across schools to track and follow-up students with absences, and a team working in 10 primary schools as part of a pilot to see the impact of having a staff member on site focused on attendance.

The investments in attendance re-engagement, along with actively pursuing prosecution options, is seeing more children back at school.

According to the RoGS School Education data, 62.1% of all South Australian students (FTE enrolments) were enrolled in SA government schools and 37.9% enrolled in non-government schools.

The data shows that government schools have a higher proportion of students from selected special needs groups than non-government schools.

Recurrent funding to SA government schools from the Australian and state governments in real terms increased by $42 million to $3.94 billion in 2022-23.

The data also shows that SA also had the second highest apparent retention rate from years 10 to 12 nationally for full time students, and for full time Aboriginal students. This highlights the importance of initiatives giving students options to stay engaged in school and learning, such as five new Technical Colleges and almost $50 million for students at risk of disengaging in school.