Natasha Coster's 14-year-old child Nyx used to love school, but mental heath issues mean they struggle to get through two lessons a day.
And sometimes, they decide not to go altogether.
"When they get to school, they don't feel comfortable going in the classroom, so they spend all their time outside the classroom sitting in stairwells or in a school counsellor's office, or with support staff," Ms Coster said.
"If they're happy enough to, they sit outside the classroom so they can hear the lesson, but at present, they're not even happy with that due to other students walking past and giving them grief for not being in class."
Mrs Coster said Nyx's teachers and support staff were doing all they could to support them, but difficulty accessing mental health care meant attending school was becoming increasingly difficult.
"The support officer at school has basically said to them, 'If you don't want to come to school we completely understand, stay home' … and I think that option is going to be exercised more frequently," she said.
"Mental health for teens and trying to find somebody is ridiculously hard."
New data released by the Productivity Commission shows the rate of children staying home from school, whether for mental health or illness, is on the rise.
The national primary school attendance rate was 87.8 per cent in 2022, a 4.5 per cent drop from 2021, after years of small declines.
The ACT had the biggest drop-off in the country, with an attendance rate of 86.7 per cent, a 6.1 per cent drop from the year before.
South Australia (5 per cent) and Victoria and New South Wales (both 4.8 per cent) also experienced attendance falls greater than the national average.
In high school, attendance sank to 84.7 per cent — a 4.1 per cent decrease from 2021.
The Northern Territory (72.6 per cent) recorded the country's lowest attendance, followed by Tasmania (82.3 per cent) and Western Australia (83.8 per cent).
The decrease is most notable in South Australia, where rates fell by 4.6 per cent, followed by Victoria (4.5 per cent).
Australian Education Union president Correna Haythorpe said a fall in school attendance had become more noticeable during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
She said the issue was "multi-layered", but the growing trend of school refusal was also a factor.
"There is no doubt that since the lockdowns, and across many of our states and territories, teachers have expressed their concern about the wellbeing that many of our students are facing, and their disengagement from school," she said.
"We believe it's very important that we have more school counsellors and mental health professionals on-site in schools to support students and also to work with teachers, because teachers need support in terms of catering for these students."
Mental health issues adding to absenteeism
Labelled "anxiety-based school avoidance" by experts, school refusal is on the rise, with a Senate inquiry launched into it last year.
In Victoria, 11,825 students were absent from school at some point during 2021 due to school refusal, while school refusal was a contributing factor in 23 per cent of school absences last year in Tasmania.
Australian Secondary Principals' Association president Andrew Pierpoint said mental health was a key driver of non-attendance at school.
"Absenteeism has always been there but I think mental health has made it more prevalent of late," he said.
He said teachers and principals needed extra resources to support students, with a national approach required.
"It's a very big job and it's getting tougher every day," he said.
"We need to be talking to the people involved and they need to be talking to us because we know how to run schools and run programs in schools but we don't know necessarily how to fund the extra resources."
Ms Haythorpe said changes in student attendance "should be a wake-up call" for state and federal governments.
"We should be having a conversation with the student community about their engagement in schools," she said
"Do we have the curriculum they need for their learning? Do we have the resources we need to support their learning? That's quite critical for all of our children."
The report on government services showed a drop in the national rate of students progressing from year 10 to years 11 and 12.
In 2021, the retention rate was 81.6 per cent, down 0.5 per cent from the previous year, and a 1.3 per cent drop from five years prior.
The biggest drop was in Western Australia, where the rate of students returning as full-time students has declined from 94.5 in 2016, to 87.1 per cent in 2021.
Retention rates were highest in the ACT at 89.7 per cent, while the Northern Territory (67.5 per cent) and Tasmania (74.5 per cent) had the lowest.
Ms Haythorpe said a new look at ensuring the highest potential retention rates was needed.
"We need to have strong senior secondary programs that deliver pathways for students not only to stay at schools for year 10, 11 and 12 but beyond school, to make sure that they have got opportunities to take up vocational education, go to university or to enter the workforce," she said.
The data also showed public school enrolments were at a 10-year low, with just 65 per cent of Australia's 4.03 million students enrolled in public schools.
