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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 TT1.5.
The two most common difficulties identified by teachers for both year levels were behavioural issues (year four, 41%; year six, 39%) and difficulty focusing attention and concentrating (year four, 43%; year six, 40%). On average, teachers reported about two out of five students across both year levels experiencing these difficulties.
Teachers also reported that, on average, about one out of four of their students demonstrated a lack of basic knowledge and skills (year four, 26%; year six, 31%), and absenteeism (year four, 27%; year six, 24%).
Difficulties relating to well-being – poor health, hunger and lack of sleep – were reported in lower proportions, with between 11% and 21% of students showing signs of these issues across both year levels.
