Whether you are a Principal, Board member, Business Manager, Enrolment & Admissions Manager, or some other senior executive within your school, the ACARA (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority) data tells you how the market is going, and you can see how you are going by comparison.

Australia wide, Independent and Catholic schools market share increased from 2022 to 2023, whilst Government schools went backwards (again), according to the ACARA data.

The ACARA data was released on the 14^th February 2024 to cover up to and including 2023. ACARA data gives us the Full Time Equivalent number of students for each school, and groups the schools into Government, Catholic and Independents. It also breaks the data down to male and female students, has some other data by schools such as teacher numbers and shows information back to 2008.

Over the period 2022 to 2023, the total number of students from 2022 to 2023 increased by 49,076 students or 1.21% Australia wide.

Independent schools moved their market share from 17.02% to 17.49%, whilst Catholic Schools moved from 18.34% to 18.43%, and Government schools moved backwards from 64.64% to 64.09%

In actual numbers, Catholic schools moved from 742,691 to 755,373 FTE students, an increase of 12,681 students or 1.71%.

Independent schools moved from 689,395 to 716,848 students, an increase of 27,453 students or 3.98%.

Government schools still increased by 8,941 or 0.34%, well below the 1.21% increase Australia wide.

Follow the link below to read Spectrum Analysis' full article on what the ACARA numbers tell us including the tables of supporting data.