ACT government high schools have clawed back a slim majority share of Canberra students after five years in which there were more teenagers in private high schools than public ones.
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The latest ACT School Census for February shows strong education growth across the city with an almost 2 per cent increase in enrolments since last year – taking total student numbers to 71,917.
Of these, government schools account for 60.4 per cent of all enrolments – or 43,427 students.
Private school enrolments accounted for 39.6 per cent of student numbers – or 28,490 students.
There were 2082 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in all ACT schools in 2015 – up by 122 students, or 6.2 per cent on the year before.
The vast majority of Indigenous students, 79.9 per cent, were enrolled in government schools.
The enrolment swing back to government high schools, meanwhile, has occurred after five years of private schools taking more than 50 per cent of enrolments.
In 2011, government high school enrolments dropped from 9722 students in 2010 to 9569.
Conversely, non-government high school enrolments – including independent and Catholic schools – increased from 9645 to 9720 over the same period.
This meant that Canberra had the highest proportion of private school students across the high school years of any state or territory in Australia.
But this year public high schools are back in the black – increasing their enrolments to 9947 compared with 9794 in the non-government sector.
ACT Education Minister Joy Burch said this brought the percentage share to 50.4 per cent for government high schools.
"We have had an increase of 106 students, and I am happy to take that," Ms Burch said.
"It is a great result for the public education system. We seem to hold our own in the primary system and the wonderful college system we have, so it is good to see us get our fair share in high school. 106 students is a couple of class-fulls of kids and I will take it."
She put the reversal of a five-year drift from government high schools to a renewed focus on quality teaching, promoting parental engagement at school and the ACT being a leader in the Australian curriculum.
Australian Education Union ACT secretary Glenn Fowler said it was "very welcome news for our city. It shows that, for an increasing number of Canberra families, the weight of evidence has triumphed over myth and rumour".
Mr Fowler said a number of studies over the past 12 months had "shown that paying school fees simply doesn't deliver an academic advantage. Public school graduates do better at university and in the job market, and they do at least as well in benchmark testing. More parents are now saving their money".
Meanwhile, as the ACT embarks on a review of educational services for children with special needs, a change to the school census figures makes it difficult to see the increased demand on schools.
While the ACT system has recorded a 25 per cent increase in children with special needs over the past four years, the new census shows a drop in students identified as having special needs – from 2934 in 2014, to 2926 this year.
An education spokesman noted that the drop was due to the way students were counted in the census as the Education and Training Directorate ceased providing early intervention services at the end of 2014 – due to the implementation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
