New information on Policies and Priorities in education in Australia released
25 June 2025 New information on Policies and Priorities in education has been released by ACARA as part of the National Report on Schooling in Australia 2024.
The Policies and Priorities chapter details the activities undertaken by the Australian, state and territory governments and the Catholic and independent school sectors to improve education outcomes in Australia.
Some of the highlights for 2024 include:
- The advancement of universal early childhood education with a $1 billion fund for new centres, and a guarantee of 3 days of subsidised care from 2026
- Progression of the National Teacher Workforce Action Plan, with targeted measures to strengthen and sustain the teaching profession
- Commitment to culturally responsive, community-led approaches to improving outcomes for First Nations students
- A focus on inclusion through continued funding for the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data (NCCD) Continuous Quality Improvement Measure
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.
The Year 12 subject enrolment data for 2023 has also been updated as part of this release. Some key data limitations must be taken into account when interpreting this data:
- It only includes enrolments in tertiary-recognised subjects. Cross-disciplinary subjects are not recorded under the 8 learning areas.
- There have been changes on the available pathways into tertiary education since the data collection began.
- Students enrolled in more than one subject within an individual learning area are only counted once.
- The data only covers Year 12 students. Senior secondary subjects completed before Year 12 are not recorded.
- The coding of subjects into the 8 learning areas is done by the state and territory certification bodies, which can lead to potential inconsistencies in the data.
Find out more about the Year 12 subject enrolment data and its limitations.
The next release in December 2025 will focus on Vocational Education and Training and Student Attainment. The complete National Report will be released in February 2026.