More Australian students are finishing high school, with new national data showing Year 12 completion rates rising for a second consecutive year.
Figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicate that about 12,000 more students completed Year 12 in 2025 compared with the previous year.
According to the data, the national school retention rate climbed to 81.3% in 2025, up from 79.1% in 2023, marking a reversal after several years of decline.
Federal education minister Jason Clare said the improvement represented a positive shift after a prolonged downturn in completion rates.
The proportion of students finishing high school had previously fallen for six consecutive years, dropping from 84.8% in 2017 to 79.1% in 2023, before beginning to recover.
“This is good news and it’s happening across the board,” Clare said.
“Public schools, Catholic schools and independent schools are all going up. The number of boys and girls finishing high school are both going up.”
Education researchers often track school retention to measure how many students remain in the education system from Year 7 through to the end of Year 12, with completion rates seen as a key indicator of educational opportunity and long-term economic outcomes.
However, the latest figures also highlight continuing disparities among different groups of students.
Shadow education minister Julian Leeser said the data shows a widening gender gap in school completion rates.
According to the statistics, 77.6% of boys complete high school compared with 85.3% of girls, a difference of nearly eight percentage points.
Leeser said the progress made in improving outcomes for girls over recent decades was a major policy achievement but warned that declining outcomes for boys required attention.
“Over the last 30 years we have made tremendous strides in the education of women and girls, and that is a public policy triumph of which we should be enormously proud,” he said.
“This is not a zero-sum game, and the data we are seeing on boys’ education is compelling.”
The data also points to persistent inequality affecting Indigenous students.
Retention rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students reached 58.6%, an increase of 1.9 percentage pointsover the past year but still far below the national average.
Leeser said the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students remained significant.
“There is a 22-point gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. That is massive,” he said.
Education experts have long warned that improving school completion among Indigenous students requires addressing broader factors including regional disadvantage, access to resources, cultural support within schools and attendance rates.
Federal and state governments have previously committed to improving educational outcomes for Indigenous Australians as part of broader national “Closing the Gap” targets.
The latest figures suggest progress in overall school completion rates, but also underline ongoing challenges in ensuring that gains are shared equally across all groups of students.
