Are Australian public school enrolments in decline, or just being outpaced by private schools?

If you grew up in the Australian education system, chances are you are one of the majority of former students who were publicly educated. This still holds true for current students, however, the latest release of Schools data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics tells us that this majority held by public schools has shrunk over time from approximately three-quarters of students (75.8%) in 1956 to just under two-thirds of students (62.8%) in 2025.

The shrinking majority of students in public schools has been a point of discussion for decades. The shift has been linked to government policy that allowed private schools to be opened in areas with adequate public school capacity, the emergence of lower-fee independent schools [Larson 2024] and inequitable funding access where “political commitment to making school funding more equitable has been largely absent” [Perry 2025].

However, the last few years of enrolment data show a more stark trend. Public schools are not just seeing a shrinking majority of school enrolments, but have stopped growing since 2020 while private schools have continued to grow at a more rapid rate.

Should we be concerned by a plateau in national public school enrolments at the national level? Perhaps not, but this plateau at a national level hides that parts of Australia are already experiencing declining public school enrolments, while other areas show resilient growth.

This can be seen using ABS Schools data that captures the number of public and private school enrolments by state or territory and remoteness area, which is separated into Major City, Inner Regional, Outer Regional, Remote and Very Remote areas. Due to periodic changes in remoteness classifications in line with the ABS census, we can only compare data from 2025 back to 2023, however in this period we can see some regional and remote areas already in decline, with some resilient states still seeing growth.

This bubble plot compares how public and private school enrolments have changed in the last two years across Australian states and territories and remoteness areas.

Each bubble represents a remoteness area within a state or territory, with only areas with sufficiently large enrolments and data collection included, removing Tasmania and some low population areas of other states. Larger bubbles represent areas with a larger number of enrolments.

The horizontal and vertical position show the growth rate of private school enrolments and public school enrolments from 2023 to 2025 respectively.

All areas saw an increase in private school enrolments, as shown by all bubbles sitting to the right of the black vertical y-axis. Bubbles above the black horizontal x-axis had a growth in public enrolments while those below saw a decline.

All areas saw greater growth in private school enrolments than public school enrolments. This is illustrated by all bubbles sitting below the black diagonal line which represents equal public and private school enrolment growth.

We now uncover the differences between remoteness areas.

Major City areas have almost three-quarters (73.6%) of all Australian enrolments, with NSW Major Cities having about a quarter of all enrolmnents and seeing a more than 1% decline in public school enrolments in the last two years. WA, Vic and SA all saw an increase in public school enrolments, with WA seeing a growth of over 3%.

Inner Regional areas are home to about one-sixth (17.1%) of Australian students, and mostly saw decreases in public school enrolments, compared to private school enrolment growth of at least 5%. Vic and WA still saw increases in public school enrolments.

Outer Regional areas have 7.5% of Australian enrolments, and Qld which has the most outer regional students saw a decline of about 4% in public school enrolments, compared to private school growth of about 6%, which is a dramatic change. SA saw an increase in public school enrolments of about 1.5% which was still well outpaced by private school growth.

Remote areas only have 1.1% of Australian enrolments, however schools in decline in remote areas are some of the most vulnerable given their location. Only SA and WA saw an increase in public school enrolments, however this was about 1% compared to private school growth of about 10% or more, which may signal a future decline in public enrolments.

Very Remote areas have only 0.7% of Australian enrolments and schools in these areas in decline are the most vulnerable. WA schools in Very Remote areas are closest in parity in public and private school growth rates of all areas on the plot, however other states saw considerable decline..

So is a public school decline inevitable?

The data shows that NSW major cities and some regional and rural areas are already seeing an enrolment decline already. This warrants immediate targeted action to address falling public school enrolments which can cause a decreases in teaching and funding allocations, increase student-to-teacher ratios and perpetuate decline further given these public schools become a less attractive choice for parents with the financial capacity to choose between public and private schools. However, states such as Victoria and Western Australia which are still seeing public school enrolment growth amongst most remoteness levels provide a case study on how targeted investment can prevent this perpetual decline.

In particular, the Victorian Government has invested “more than $1.6 billion” since 2019 targeting attraction, recruitment, supporting early-career teachers, retention, and career development” [Victorian Government 2026] and seen growth in public school enrolments in major city and inner regional areas. The Western Australia Government’s $44.1 million Regional Attraction and Retention Incentive has focused on attracting and retaining a quality teacher workforce in regional and remote areas [Department of Education WA 2026] and inner regional, remote and very remote areas have seen a growth in public school enrolments.

These state government based targeted investments appear to be reaping results and are the most effective way to address declining public school enrolments given the lack of safety nets in the school recurrent funding model which uses current year enrolments to calculate school funding entitlements [Department of Education 2026].

References

Australian Bureau of Statistics 2026, Schools, 2025, Table 43a: Full-time equivalent (FTE) students, 2006-2025 and Table 46a: Full-time equivalent (FTE) students, 2023–2025, ABS, viewed 13 April 2026, https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/education/schools/latest-release.

Department of Education n.d., Attraction and retention incentive for remote and regional schools, Government of Western Australia, viewed 21 April, https://www.education.wa.edu.au/attraction-and-retention-incentive-for-remote-and-regional-schools.

Larsen, S 2024, ‘More Australian families are choosing private schools – we need to understand why’, The Conversation, 21 October, viewed 19 April 2026, https://theconversation.com/more-australian-families-are-choosing-private-schools-we-need-to-understand-why-242791.

Perry, LB 2025, ‘Tensions undermining equitable school funding: insights from Australia’, Journal of Educational Administration and History, vol. 57, no. 1, pp. 56–73, viewed 20 April 2026, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00220620.2024.2370359.

Victorian Government 2026, Ensuring a strong, sustainable and supported school workforce, viewed 21 April 2026, https://www.vic.gov.au/ensuring-strong-sustainable-and-supported-school-workforce.

Attribution of inspiration and AI Assistance

This visualisation utilised DATA5002 course lecture notes and lab materials. For the creation of the bubble plot, I adapted the basic bubble plot example the R graph gallery. One of the scrollytelling articles from the UK Office for National Statistics course reading provided a great inspiration for the kind of highlighting and labelling transitions that can be achieved to incorporate a bubble plot.

This visualisation was implemented using assistance from both ChatGPT and Gemini. I used both ChatGPT and Gemini to construct a template for a scrollytelling article based on my wireframe and plot R code, which provided the CSS and Javascript portions of the RMarkdown file. As I modified the template to bring it closer the design principles of my visualisation, I used ChatGPT and Gemini to assist with adding or editing features as I desired. The written sections are my own analysis and AI was only a editing aid for the written section, with ZoteroBib used for refencing, supported by Gemini AI for specific UNSW Harvard referening.