Education Performance, 2026

This release covers the 2025–26 academic and financial year. It includes public, treaty, faith and licensed independent provision. States use different school-year dates; results are aligned to the year ending 30 June 2026.

Enrolment and institutions

The Republic has 1.40 million primary and secondary school sites. The median school enrols 164 pupils, while dense urban schools commonly exceed 1,800 and remote combined schools may enrol fewer than 30. A site count does not measure subject choice, building condition or whether all year groups are taught locally.

Attendance, absence and exclusion

Overall attendance was 92.4% of possible sessions. Persistent absence—missing at least 10% of sessions—affected 11.8% of school pupils; severe absence above 50% affected 1.9%. Illness, disability, housing instability, caring, transport failure, seasonal work and disengagement all appear in the same administrative measure.

States recorded 7.8 million fixed-period exclusions and 2.1 million permanent or year-long exclusions. Boys, disabled pupils, children in care, some treaty-language pupils and students in the poorest income fifth are overrepresented. Alternative provision returns 58% of pupils to ordinary schooling within a year; the remainder continue in specialist, vocational, health or justice settings.

Remote schools close more sessions for weather and transport but often provide radio, offline and community-hall teaching. Metropolitan pupils lose fewer whole days to weather and more partial days to overcrowded transport, insecure housing, anxiety and informal work.

Teachers, staff and class size

Ratios include specialist and non-timetabled teachers, so they are lower than actual class size. Shortages are concentrated in mathematics, sciences, computing, special education, treaty languages, rural primary leadership and vocational trades. Affluent districts fill posts through housing access, professional networks and local supplements; poor urban and remote schools rely more heavily on temporary permits and rotating staff.

Completion and progression

Apprenticeship completion is highest where one employer, college and union share records and lowest in construction, care, hospitality and small-firm placements where work changes before assessment. University participation is high in Dunmere, the Capital, Goldmere and Westrake and low in remote, old-industrial and low-income districts even after controlling for school results.

Funding and household cost

Public education and training expenditure is R$3.06 trillion, 5.8% of GDP. Average public spending is R$11,800 per primary and secondary pupil, R$16,400 per technical learner and R$21,700 per publicly supported higher-education student. Remote boarding, transport, specialist disability support and small schools raise per-pupil cost without necessarily producing broader subject choice.

Households pay for clothing, devices, travel, meals, tutoring, examination resits, accommodation and lost working time. The median school household spends R$1,240 per child beyond tax-funded provision; the top income fifth spends R$4,900, mostly on tutoring, activities and transport. Officially voluntary charges can become practical barriers where a child cannot participate without equipment or a contribution.

Rural boarding and transport

About 2.8 million pupils use state, treaty, faith or co-operative boarding during part of the year. A further 19.6 million travel more than an hour each way on at least one school day. Boarding preserves secondary and specialist access but separates children from family and language communities. Weekly transport, local guardians, safeguarding inspection and communications access are therefore treated as educational services rather than optional welfare.

School transport operated 5.4 billion passenger journeys. Weather, driver shortage and vehicle maintenance cancelled 2.7% of scheduled rural routes and 0.8% of urban routes. A cancelled route can remove a whole school day in a remote district while an urban delay usually removes only the first lesson; national absence figures do not show that difference clearly.

Disability and language provision

Thirty-one million school pupils receive a recognised disability adjustment or special-education plan. Of those, 71% receive the specified core support, 18% receive partial support and 11% wait for assessment or provision. Speech therapy, classroom assistants, sensory support, accessible transport and specialist mental-health staff have the longest gaps.

Fifty-two million pupils receive structured instruction through or in a language other than the common public language. Provision includes treaty-language immersion, bilingual schools, Wardic-language support, southern allied languages and newcomer programmes. About 29% of residents use two or more languages regularly, so language support is not confined to recent migrants.

National examinations are available in twelve full language versions and with approved interpretation or terminology support in a further thirty-eight. Small language communities face delayed materials and shortages of qualified markers. Courts and universities accept equivalent certificates, but employers do not always recognise them in practice.

Outcome inequality

Language alone does not determine outcome. Established multilingual urban communities often outperform the national average, while recent arrivals facing insecure housing and interrupted schooling do not. Treaty-language programmes with stable local staff show strong attendance and completion; programmes dependent on visiting teachers do not.

State completion rates range from 70–76% in the most remote and restructuring states to 90–93% in Dunmere, Harthwaite, Goldmere and the best-served Capital districts. Within-state gaps are often larger than the differences between state averages. The Capital contains elite schools, crowded estates, migrant reception centres and specialist federal academies inside one statistic.

Ordinary process and delays

A child entering a public school is registered through a municipal or state admissions office, assigned by address and capacity, screened for language, disability, care and transport needs, and transferred to the school's roll. A straightforward local move takes five working days. A cross-state move requiring records, specialist support or a disputed address takes a median of 24 days and a 90th-percentile 73 days.

Families bridge the gap through temporary attendance, relatives' addresses, shared transport, online work and informal agreements with a headteacher. These arrangements keep learning going but can leave meals, safeguarding and disability funding attached to the wrong institution. The national portability standard requires funding to follow within thirty days; 1.7 million transfers exceeded it.

Current pressures and response

The main 2026 pressures are teacher housing, building maintenance, mental health, disability assessment, urban growth, falling rolls in declining towns and unequal access to advanced subjects. The school-estate backlog is R$620 billion. About 96,000 sites require urgent roof, fire, water or ventilation work; most remain open under monitored restrictions.

The Skills Portability Bill would establish common technical-recognition and digital transcript rules. Teacher unions support portable pensions and housing but oppose larger classes and temporary licences as substitutes for recruitment. Rural states want boarding and transport treated in equalisation. Metropolitan states want funding to follow population before the next census revision.

Related sources

• Education in the Republic explains organisation, curriculum and pathways.
• Demographic Ledger of the Republic controls age, population and school-site totals.
• Housing System of the Republic explains staff and student housing pressures.
• Peoples, Languages and Treaty Nations Register controls community and language names and legal status.