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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 three most common difficulties identified by teachers for both year levels were behavioural issues (year four, 33%; year six, 32%), difficulty focusing attention and concentrating (year four, 38%; year six, 36%) and a lack of basic knowledge and skills (year four, 36%; year six, 27%). On average, teachers reported about one out of three students across both year levels experiencing these difficulties.
Poor health, absenteeism, hunger, and lack of sleep were reported as issues affecting 15% to 27% of students.
