ACARA news, May 2025

New resource for teachers to support Australian students in developing a greater understanding of media literacy


19 May 2025

Ensuring Australian students develop a greater understanding of the modern media landscape in a digitally connected world is at the heart of a new teaching resource released by the ACARA.

Working in partnership with key media literacy experts, ACARA has developed the new Curriculum connection: Media consumers and creators to support our teachers to make sure all students are engaged in developing media literacy knowledge and skills across Foundation to Year 10, specifically in Media Arts, English and Digital Technologies.

“Whether it’s a news story, a television show, an online video or a social media post, our young people need to learn how to sort fact from fiction and work out whether something is credible or not,” said ACARA CEO, Stephen Gniel.

“We need to ensure students can develop the critical and analytical thinking needed to contend with an ever-evolving digital media landscape. As the recent Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters report into civics education and political participation highlighted, this is crucially important if we want our young people to be active and informed citizens.

“This new Curriculum connection resource will also help encourage our young people to express their creativity as storytellers and creators of media,” Mr Gniel said.

Read ACARA’s media release (PDF 113 KB).

Find out more about the new Curriculum connection: Media consumers and creators resource.

Latest data on schools and students in Australia released


07 May 2025

The latest data on schools and students in Australia has been released by ACARA as part of the National Report on Schooling in Australia 2024. 

The two new published chapters cover information on schools and schooling, student enrolment and retention. 

ACARA progressively releases chapters of the annual National Report on Schooling in Australia as the data becomes available, which provides more timely commentary on progress against nationally agreed policy initiatives by Australia’s school education sector. 

Some of the key highlights for 2024 include: 

  • There were 9,653 schools in Australia, an increase of 24 schools since 2023, of which 69.7% of schools were government, 18.2% were Catholic and 12.1% independent. 
  • A total of 4,132,006 students were enrolled in Australian schools, an increase of 1.1% from 2023.  
  • 63.4% were enrolled in government schools, 19.9% in Catholic schools and 16.8% in independent schools.  
  • 54.9% were primary school students and 45.1% were in secondary school. 
  • Over the past decade, total enrolments grew by 437,905 (11.9%) which largely reflects the growth in the school-age population. 
  • The number of students in independent schools rose from 529,857 in 2014 to 692,271 in 2024 – a 30.7% increase. This has resulted in a 2.5 percentage point increase in the proportion of students attending independent schools since 2014.  
  • In 2024, the proportion of 6–15-year-olds enrolled in Australian schools was 98.6% – the same as in 2022 and 2023, but down from 99.0% in 2021 (data from the National Schools Statistics Collection). 
  • There were 320,377 full time equivalent (FTE) teaching staff in Australia — an increase of 8,723 (2.8%) from 2023.  
  • Teaching staff numbers included 62.3% employed in government schools, 19.2% in Catholic schools and 18.5% in independent schools. 
  • Australia’s teaching workforce continued to be mainly female, with women making up 72.0% of FTE teachers in 2024. 
  • The average student to teaching staff ratio was 12.9 students per teacher, a reduction from 13.1 students per teacher in 2023 and 13.9 students per teacher in 2014. 
  • The average student to teaching staff ratio was lower in independent schools (11.7 students per teacher) compared to Catholic schools (13.3 students per teacher) and government schools (13.1 students per teacher). 
  • The average student-teacher ratio was 11.7 students per teacher at the secondary level, compared with 14.0 students per teacher at the primary level.

Access the National Report on Schooling data portal.

The next release in June 2025 will provide an overview of progress against the commitments to action agreed by Australian Education ministers in the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) declaration. The chapters on Vocational Education and Training and Student Attainment will be released in December 2025, and the school funding chapters, along with the full national report, will be released in February 2026.