Attitudes to school and reading achievement among secondary school students

This study analysed students’ attitudes towards school and the relationship between these attitudes and reading performance. Using a sample of 57,572 Year 7 and 9 students from 306 Victorian government schools, the analysis combined two de-identified data sets – students’ responses to the Student Attitudes to School Survey and their performance in NAPLAN reading assessments – from a single year (2017). The findings of this study demonstrate that a re-organisation of survey items into six new factors may represent student attitudes more usefully than the current 20-factor structure. Each of the six factors was found to relate to a set of demographic moderators. The results yielded statistically significant relationships between each attitude factor and reading achievement and growth. This study proposes a four-cluster model that groups schools with similar profiles across the six attitude factors. This model may improve the ability of the education system to interpret and analyse relative data and use these findings more effectively.