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<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\nImproving educational engagement and year 12 attainment for the Australia We Want.<\/em><\/p>\n If we want stronger communities, a more prosperous, productive and happier Australia, inclusive education and lifelong learning must be a higher priority.<\/p>\n When Community Council for Australia (CCA) first brought sector leaders together to discuss the Australia we wanted to live in, agreeing the priority values we all supported was relatively straightforward. We all wanted to live in a just, fair, safe, equal, inclusive, united, authentic, creative, confident, courageous, optimistic, generous, kind, compassionate Australia.<\/p>\n Commitment to these values was shared. Agreeing how we would know these values were being implemented \u2013 the measures or indicators \u2013 was more challenging.<\/p>\n There was one area everyone in the room readily agreed had to be a priority indicator \u2013 access to education. Education changes lives, reduces inter-generational inequality, and creates opportunity.<\/p>\n It has been estimated that for each person who does not complete year 12 or its equivalent, the lifetime cost to the community is almost $1 million.<\/p>\n The issues, the problems surrounding educational disadvantage and disengagement are well-known.\u00a0 When CCA brought together community, academic, education and business leaders together to talk about the outcomes we want from education, our focus was on solutions \u2013 and what we can do to make them happen.<\/p>\n Leaders united around two resounding messages. We need to create lifelong learners \u2013 children, young people, and adults motivated and equipped to learn, adapt and flourish in a fast-evolving world.\u00a0 To get there, education \u2013 learning \u2013 must become everyone\u2019s business.<\/p>\n We know learning does not begin and end at a school or a college gate. The factors influencing learning include; the attributes and personality of the individual, family characteristics, peer groups, the communities students belong to, the way schools, business and other institutions operate. We also know that students who experience socio-economic disadvantage, remoteness, or are from an Indigenous family are more likely to disengage with education.<\/p>\n Learning needs are as individual as each and everyone one of us.\u00a0 Which is why the communities that we move within, that touch our lives in so many different ways are powerful when they take an interest in our aspirations, our future and our learning.<\/p>\n
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