Australian students are lonelier and feel more out of place at school than they did a decade ago, a new report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has found.

The latest study from the Program for International Student Assessment – or Pisa – has revealed that Australian students’ rank well below the global average when it comes to how comfortable they feel at school.

The report measured students’ “sense of belonging” at school by asking questions such as whether they “feel like they belong at school” or whether they felt lonely or left out.

It found a significant decline in how Australian students felt at school between 2003 and 2015, with Indigenous students, females and students from low socio-economic backgrounds recording the lowest sense of belonging.

Dr Sue Thomson from the Australian Council for Educational Research – which published the report in Australia – said the report offered an insight into students “at risk of becoming disengaged”.

“Although these results don’t tell us why some students have a lower sense of belonging, they do highlight where the social issues are – among students who are Indigenous, female, Australian-born, from low SES backgrounds and country areas,” she said.

Pisa ranks students from across the OECD on a variety of academic measures. The last survey completed in 2015 found that Australia’s reading, maths and science literacy had all declined.



The new report said sense of belonging “has been shown to be an important schooling outcome in its own right” and for some students is indicative of educational success and long-term health and well-being.

“Research shows that a sense of belonging is an important schooling outcome,” Thomson said.

“For some students it really makes a difference to their educational success and long-term health and wellbeing.”

But Australia now ranks below countries such as the United Kingdom and United States, and well below the OECD average. Spain recorded the highest sense of belonging amongst its students.

But the decline within Australia will be of most concern to education officials.

In 2003 88% of Australian students agreed that they “feel like they belong at school”. By 2015 the figure had decreased to 72% , almost double the average decline across the OECD.

Similarly, in 2003, 92% of Australian students disagreed with the notion that they “feel like an outsider” at school. By 2015 it had decreased to 77%.