The spatial implications of academic achievement in Year 12: Rethinking discourses of disadvantage in rural locations

Abstract

Rurality is an identified point of disadvantage in measures such as the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) and school resourcing models. However, socioeconomic disadvantage is commonly used as an explanation for lower average student achievement in rural locations. Thus, policies are often directed towards reducing disadvantage associated with socioeconomic status, and rurality is overlooked. This research tests the validity of these assumptions using a matched study approach. We examine data on New South Wales (NSW) students, schools and courses to investigate how the English and Mathematics achievement levels of students in their final year of secondary school are associated with family and school characteristics across locations. The findings show that socioeconomic variation does not fully account for differences in achievement in rural locations. Instead, rurality appears to mediate other effects on student achievement in a complex interplay of factors contributing to lower average results. This highlights the need to consider the specificities of rurality in schooling, particularly the role of rural knowledges and perspectives in schooling and student achievement.

Leading a successful rural school in Australia

“…As such, they had the desire and the capacity to support their child's learning, both at home and with the affordance of their time in the school and at school events. Dean et al (2023) commented that the policymaker response in Australia has historically sought to address rural students' academic achievement concerns through approaches that conflate rurality with low socioeconomic status (SES). However, the findings from this study demonstrate that inexplicably chaining rurality with low SES in Australia is too large a generalisation because there exists various layers of economic influence on rural places in the country, "with some small rural villages in the proximity of large rural towns benefiting from the economy of the larger town, while others do not" (Roberts and Green, 2013, p. 771), which was certainly the case for Bandjina.…”

“…As such, they had the desire and the capacity to support their child's learning, both at home and with the affordance of their time in the school and at school events. Dean et al. (2023) commented that the policymaker response in Australia has historically sought to address rural students' academic achievement concerns through approaches that conflate rurality with low socioeconomic status (SES).…”