Signs of School Disengagement

Taskforce identifies early signs of school disengagement before it’s too late

May 26, 2026

I’m keen to share this article because some of the findings are surprising ~ particularly what it reveals about girls’ engagement at school. As someone who advocates strongly for boys’ literacy and learning engagement, I often focus on the barriers boys face in education. But this research is a good reminder that student disengagement is complex, and the early signs can look different across learners.

What stands out is the importance of noticing disengagement before it becomes absenteeism. Relationships, belonging, enjoyment of learning, and how students feel about school all matter deeply — and often provide the earliest clues that a young person may be disconnecting.

It’s an important read for educators, school leaders, and families who care about supporting students early and well. (Shortened Education Review article as written by Rebecca, May 26, 2026 below)

Taskforce identifies early signs of school disengagement before it’s too late

Finding out whether students are engaged in learning takes more than looking at attendance records, according to a new study.

A recently established taskforce has found that early warning signs for student disengagement can be identified and acted on in the first few years of secondary school.

The Education Engagement Taskforce (EET) is a partnership between the ImpactEd Group and Social Ventures Australia (SVA). Launched earlier this year, it is designed to identify and understand disengagement indicators, so they can be addressed before they start to have an effect on student learning and wellbeing.

Currently, schools primarily rely on absence data as an indicator of student disengagement, but by the time a student is not coming to school, other markers of disengagement have likely been missed.

Campbelltown Principal Network director of educational leadership Clayton Reedie believes access to more information about student engagement is vital for schools.

“Young people are growing up in a very complex world. Our schools have a lot of great strategies in place to support students to get the most out of their learning,” he said.

“Any additional information that we can get, that helps us to understand what might be stopping kids from engaging with their learning – that’s really valuable.”

The EET’s findings, based on data from 16,000 students across 43 schools, reveal other early warning signs. These include how students feel about school, their relationships and what drives them to study and learn.

The EET measures engagement in the following ways.

Firstly, they look at the levels of commitment, involvement and emotional investment students have with school. This is then broken down into three types of engagement:

cognitive engagement – beliefs, value and agency
emotional engagement – relationships, belonging, inclusion and enjoyment
behavioural engagement – effort and actions.

Using these measures the EET found engagement declined markedly in early secondary school, particularly for girls. From Year 7 to Year 9 the percentage of girls reporting low engagement went from nine percent to 29 per cent.

This doesn’t improve as they continue through school. By Year 12, 44 per cent of girls were worrying about school compared to 23 per cent of boys.

To read the full findings download the Student Engagement in Australia: May 2026 Report here