Student Attendance Rates in NSW Government Schools by SA4, 2011-2024

Average attendance rates for students in New South Wales government schools, aggregated by Statistical Area 4 (SA4). The dataset, published by the NSW Department of Education, covers the period from 2011 to 2024, with data sourced from the Semester 1 Return of Absences Collection.

Use Cases

• Analyze regional disparities in school attendance based on SA4 geography.
• Track long-term trends in student attendance rates from 2011 to 2024.
• Assess the impact of policy changes, such as the 2018 national reporting standards, on attendance metrics.
• Investigate the effects of specific events, like the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, on school attendance data.

Strengths

• Covers a 13-year time series from 2011 to 2024.
• Includes a data quality statement addressing dimensions like accuracy and coherence.
• Geographic aggregation uses the standardized ABS SA4 (2021 Edition 3) boundaries.
• Explicit documentation notes for data comparability issues across key years (2018, 2020, 2021).

Limitations

• Data from 2018 onwards is not comparable with earlier years due to changes in calculation rules.
• 2020 data is not provided, and 2021 data is not comparable, creating gaps for trend analysis.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

NSW Department of Education

Collection Method

Semester 1 Return of Absences Collection

Time Range

2011-2024

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-17 17:50:43.888424.

Geography

New South Wales, Australia, by Statistical Area 4 (SA4)