Victoria is undergoing a classroom crisis with large numbers of students expelled or suspended from the state’s schools amid a rapid rise in unruly behaviour and schoolyard violence.
According to the Department of Education’s annual expulsion report, a five-year high was reached in 2023 with 266 students expelled from Victorian schools. Male students were twice as likely to be expelled as females, and the largest number was seen among Year Nines with 70 expulsions recorded.
Of those expelled, 41 came from “culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds”, 10 were “migrant, refugee or asylum seeker background students”, and 23 were indigenous. Just 1% of the state’s population is aboriginal.
The expulsions occur alongside a related rise in suspensions. As the Herald Sun reported last month, documents obtained under Freedom of Information show that the number of suspensions in Victoria in 250 state primary and secondary schools rose 30 per cent from 2019 to 2023.
An average of around 90 students a day were suspended from Victorian schools, with a shocking 87,021 total suspensions seen over the period.
Schools in Melbourne’s immigrant-dominated outer suburbs had among the highest rates in the state. Mount Ridley P-12 college in Craigieburn, where almost half the population was born overseas and 28% arrived in the five years before 2021, was on top with a total of 1,844 suspensions.
Violence-plagued Melton Secondary College was in third place with 1,256 students suspended.
Greater Shepparton Secondary College in central Victoria was second with 1,353 suspensions. The recently amalgamated rural school has gained notoriety in the state for its “culture of violence” and for persistent “racial tensions” between aboriginal and immigrant students.
This wave of suspensions and expulsions comes as Victoria also confronts a teacher recruitment crisis and youth crime epidemic. As of last year, 1,500 teaching positions were unfilled in the state and the teacher-attrition rate rose almost 20% from 2021 to 2022.
Crime statistics also shows the amount of offences committed by 10-17-year-olds was at its highest level since 2009, and up a 16.9% year-on-year.
This rise in youth crime and misdemeanour has bled into the state’s classrooms and school results. Victoria’s schoolrooms have become increasingly disorderly and ill-disciplined, and one in three of its students now fail to reach basic benchmarks in literacy and numeracy.
Much of this is echoed in other states. As a recent OECD report stated of the nation’s schools: “The disciplinary climate in Australia was among the least favourable in the OECD.”
Education expert Glenn Fahey of the Centre for Independent Studies said chaos in our classrooms is one of “the most important education issues for teachers and schools.”
“The OECD’s index of disciplinary climate is a measure of classroom disorder and disruption that’s consistently been worsening in Australia, making it among the worst in the developed world,” he said.
The decline in our classrooms is further reflected in the corresponding decline in our educational attainment.
Australia has slid down the rankings in the international PISA test, with our top-five position of 25 years ago falling to us being placed outside the top 10, with declines of 37 points in maths, 20 points in science and 30 points in reading since records began in 2000.
Header image: Melton Secondary College (LinkedIn).
