Reporting research for teachers: students in the senior secondary years

Traditionally, until the 1970s, senior secondary schooling in Australia was restricted to a minority of each age group. This was particularly pronounced in the case of government schools. From that time, however, the proportion of each cohort staying at school beyond the compulsory years began to increase rapidly and, by the 1980s, retention patterns in secondary schools had changed dramatically. These changes were most marked in government secondary schools. In this article the authors report on a study conducted on a sample of government high schools in New South Wales, which examined the post compulsory educational experiences of a group of students who entered Year 9 in 1987.