The challenge of engaging students

By Bernadette Cronin, Chief of Student Services, Education Excellence, at Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS).

Our vision at MACS is to ensure that: ‘Every student is inspired and enabled to flourish and enrich the world’ (MACS 2023, p. 7). ‘Inspired and enabled’ is further explained:

‘Inspire’ comes from the Latin inspīrāre, to blow into, breathe upon, excite, inflame. We aim not only to motivate our students to act, but to enable them to act effectively.

With data showing a decline in student attendance and research into disengaged students (ACARA 2025; ACER 2025), it is more important than ever to design and implement evidence-based strategies for improving and sustaining student engagement in schools (Whiting 2024).

The importance of engagement goes beyond students’ academic results, as ‘[s]tudents who are engaged in their learning not only achieve greater outcomes in school, but in other areas of life such as employment and connectedness to community’ (VATL, n.d.).

The challenges of the contemporary world

Engaging young people in their learning can be a significant challenge. For many students, simply attending school is the first hurdle. Across Australia attendance rates struggle to return to pre-COVID levels. In 2019, national attendance rates were 91.4%, whereas in 2024 it was 88.3% (ACARA 2025).

Social media, rising anxiety and mental health concerns, and complex family circumstances add to the difficulties. In its submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry on the national trend of school refusal, the Black Dog Institute stated that, ‘A solution to the growing school attendance concerns must include a focus on mental health in particular, anxiety disorders and depression’ (BDI, p. 3).

For some children and young people, their learning challenges present additional hurdles and for others, the hurdle is finding the right path to travel on, especially as they move through secondary school and start to think about post-secondary options.

Students can also be preoccupied with issues that extend far beyond their control, or the control of their school. Concerns about the cost of living, climate change, violence, safety, discrimination and equality are prevalent among many young people in Victoria (McHale et al. 2024).

Engagement pathways for every student

Engagement is different for every student. One of the challenges for schools is finding the engagement pathway for each student within the daily life of a classroom. Engagement will not be replicated in each classroom in the exact same way.

All engagement can be facilitated across three domains: affective, behaviour and cognition – represented in science of engagement research as a tripartite model. Improving a student’s engagement requires them to be known across each domain (Wong & Liem 2021).

The role of learning in engaging students

When the teaching is right for the child, delivered in practices that are proven effective and implemented with fidelity, the rates of engagement in learning can increase. ‘Student academic, behavioural, communication, engagement, health, and wellbeing needs are interconnected and complementary facets of student learning’ (MACS 2024, p. 14). Educators understand that student engagement is crucial for academic success and for the full flourishing of every student.

The MACS Vision for Instruction (2024) focuses on an evidence-based approach to teaching, with an initial focus on reading, writing and mathematics (aiming to enhance cognitive engagement). This approach ensures that instructional strategies are grounded in research and proven to be effective.

The current embedding phase of implementation is focused on ensuring that teachers have the pedagogical framework and practices that allow them to teach and monitor the growth of every student, and support the ongoing learning of the student (Sykes & Prismall 2025).

The MACS Vision for Engagement

The MACS Vision for Engagement will be launched later this year. It will be the companion statement to the Vision for Instruction and together they articulate the key work in the Flourishing Learners program as part of the MACS 2030 strategic plan (MACS 2023).

The Vision for Engagement is designed to support school leaders and staff to attend to the areas of need across the domains of engagement, including school attendance and student mental health.

The position statement is currently in academic review and will provide a foundation of contemporary evidence across the breadth of engagement and articulate the shared practices that MACS commits to.

Formation of the Student Engagement unit

As part of the Education Excellence directorate refresh, the former Learning Diversity and Student Wellbeing teams have come together as the Student Engagement unit (SEU). The SEU provides expert support to schools in relation to inclusive learning, student behaviour and support, and student health and wellbeing, including attendance.

The SEU works collaboratively with schools to inform the provision of adjustments following the collation and analysis of student data. The unit is committed to innovation and evidence-based practice, and works with schools to design and inform adjustments and targeted interventions to support learning, behaviour, and health and wellbeing.

The consultancy, advice and support the SEU can provide focuses on access and participation, instructional provision and programming for the needs of an individual student, cohorts of students and school-wide practices.

Schools can draw on the expertise of the SEU’s psychologists, speech pathologists, education officers and learning partners specialised in learning, learner difficulty and difference, cognition, oral language, engagement, attendance, autism, behaviour, giftedness, physical/chronic health concerns, hearing, vision, Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander education and support, English as an Additional Language (EAL), new arrivals and refugees.

Parental consent is required for student-specific consultation, observation and/or assessment. To access support please submit a consultation request through the Record of Student Adjustment & Evaluation (ROSAE) available on the CEVN website under Student Support.

Through the ongoing work of our specialists, together with the upcoming Vision for Engagement, we aim to realise the vision of MACS 2030 by placing ‘the individual student at the heart of what MACS does’ (MACS 2023, p. 8).

References

Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) ‘When students feign interest: new research shows how to get them back’, ACER Discover, ACER, Camberwell, accessed 20 March 2025 www.acer.org/au/discover/article/when-students-feign-interest-new-research-shows-how-to-get-them-back.

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) January 2025: National Report on Schooling in Australia (ANR) – January 2025 release, ACARA news, ACARA, Sydney, www.acara.edu.au/news-and-media/news-details?section=202501220020.

McHale, R, Brennan, N, Boon, B, Richardson, E, Rossetto, A & Christie, R 2024, Youth Survey Report, Mission Australia, Sydney, accessed 20 March 2025 www.missionaustralia.com.au/what-we-do/research-impact-policy-advocacy/youth-survey.

Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS) 2024, Vision for Instruction, East Melbourne, accessed 20 March 2025 www.macs.vic.edu.au/MelbourneArchdioceseCatholicSchools/media/Documentation/Documents/Vision-For-Instruction-Position-Statement.pdf.

Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS) 2023, MACS 2030: Forming Lives to Enrich the World, MACS, East Melbourne, accessed 20 March 2025 www.macs.vic.edu.au/MelbourneArchdioceseCatholicSchools/media/About-Us/Documentation/MACS-2030-Strategic-Plan.pdf.

Sykes, SM & Prismall, N 2025, ‘Vision for Instruction progress and impact one year on’, School Bulletin, Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools, East Melbourne, accessed 20 March 2025 https://coms.macs.vic.edu.au/eNews/2025/Term14/2025Term1Week6/LearningDirections222177913867141161135413311166.aspx.

Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership (VATL) 2024, ‘Student engagement’, VATL, East Melbourne, accessed 20 March 2025 www.academy.vic.gov.au/resource-collection/student-engagement.

Whiting, C 2024, ‘Improving learning outcomes for children and young people’, Australian Education Research Organisation, Melbourne, accessed 20 March 2025 www.edresearch.edu.au/other/articles/improving-learning-outcomes-children-and-young-people.

Wong, ZY & Liem, GAD 2022, ‘Student Engagement: Current State of the Construct, Conceptual Refinement, and Future Research Directions’, Educational Psychology Review, 34, 107–138, accessed 20 March 2025 www.researchgate.net/publication/353037023_Student_Engagement_Current_State_of_the_Construct_Conceptual_Refinement_and_Future_Research_Directions.

Bernadette Cronin can be contacted on 9267 0228 or via bcronin@macs.vic.edu.au.

Image: Our Lady of Fatima School, Rosebud