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Student difficulties identified by teachers
Teachers were asked to indicate the proportion of their students they believed were experiencing specific difficulties. The response choices were percentage brackets: ‘0%–20%’, ’21%–40%’, ’41%–60%’, ‘61%–80%’, or ’81%–100%’. Percentage brackets were used so that teachers could more easily report how many students were experiencing difficulties, but they are broad groups. All responses in these percentage brackets were combined and used to calculate averages that could show more detail than, for example, ‘0-20%’.
These average proportions of students that teachers considered were showing signs of these difficulties by year level are shown in Table TT2.5.
The two most common difficulties identified by teachers for both year levels were behavioural issues (grade five, 39%; grade seven, 33%), difficulty focusing attention and concentrating (grade five, 36%; grade seven, 32%), and lack of basic knowledge or skills (grade five, 32%; grade seven, 30%). On average, teachers reported about one out of three students across both year levels experiencing these difficulties.
Teachers also reported that, on average, about one out of four of their students demonstrated reading impairment such as dyslexia (Grade five, 25%; grade seven, 23%). Absenteeism was another area where teachers commonly reported difficulty, particularly with grade five students. Teachers reported that on average, about 33% of grade five students and 21% of grade seven students had difficulty with absenteeism.
The least reported difficulties were related to well-being – poor health, hunger and lack of sleep – with between 17% and 21% of students showing signs of these issues across both year levels. This is between approximately one and two out of ten students.
