Country students falling behind at school

By Jewel Topsfield
Updated August 30 2014 - 11:08am, first published 12:33am

Victorian students at government schools in the country are almost seven months behind city students in reading as early as year 3, according to disturbing new research.

The analysis finds that students at government city schools (Melbourne and Geelong) consistently perform better than their rural and regional counterparts in NAPLAN and VCE results, school attendance, year 12 completion rates and access to university.

One reason is that parents of rural students tend to have less formal education and are less likely to be employed in professional occupations, such asmedicine, law and banking.

However the research by Victoria University, found this did not explain all of the gap in performance between urban and country students, because rural schools face major challenges.

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