Spike in Year 12 success

MORE Tasmanian students completed Year 12 in 2016 than in any other year in the past decade, new figures show.

The Productivity Commission’s education report on government services to be released today shows 60 per cent of Tasmanian students completed Year 12 in 2016, up from 51 per cent in 2015.

A decade ago that figure was 54 per cent.

Education Minister Jeremy Rockliff said the figures showed the Government’s program of extending high schools to Year 12 was working.

“The Year 12 attainment rate reports an improvement of 9 percentage points from 2015 to 2016, showing the first year of high school extensions started on a strong footing,” Mr Rockliff said.

However, Tasmania’s Year 12 attainment rates remained below the Australian average, with only the Northern Territory recording a worse result.

And when broken down into attainment rates by locality, in 2016 just 37 per cent of Tasmanian students in remote areas and 48 per cent in very remote areas completed Year 12.

Labor education spokeswoman Michelle O’Byrne has said the policy to extend all Tasmanian high schools to Year 12 would kill the state’s secondary colleges, was unsustainable and would result in limited course selections for students.

Tasmania spent $811 million on government schools in 2015-16 and $61.5 million on non-government schools.