Rural roadblocks: Exploring barriers to school attendance for students with disability

Lead: Associate Professor Lisa McKay-Brown, Faculty of Education

Students with disability are more likely to experience irregular school attendance than their peers, yet existing data does not capture attendance by disability status, meaning the true scale of the problem is unknown. This gap is particularly acute in rural and remote Australia, where students already attend at significantly lower rates than those in metropolitan areas (65.8% attendance in very remote areas compared to 89.2% in cities), and where compounding barriers, including long travel distances, limited specialist services, teacher shortages, and fragmented coordination across education, health, and disability sectors, are likely to make attendance even harder for students with disability.

Research into school absenteeism has historically focused on metropolitan contexts, leaving rural and remote experiences poorly understood.

Through qualitative interviews with parents and, where appropriate, students with disability across diverse rural and remote communities, this seed project will document lived experiences of school attendance barriers. The findings will inform the design of a future national, representative survey to quantify prevalence and identify the structural and contextual factors shaping attendance for students with disability across Australia.

The aim is to generate foundational evidence on the institutional and cultural factors influencing school attendance for students with disability in rural and remote communities, filling a critical gap in current data and laying the groundwork for large-scale national research to drive more effective policy and service responses.