A new snapshot of Australia’s youth – their education, health and wellbeing, employment opportunities and political participation – shows some troubling results for SA and nationally.
IT’S a truism that the future of a nation is its young people, so it makes sense to measure their progress and highlight areas that need improvement.
That is the aim of the inaugural Australian Youth Development Index report being released in Canberra as part of International Youth Day today.
The Federal Government-commissioned report combines 16 key indicators across the five areas of education, health and wellbeing, employment and opportunity, political participation and civic participation.
“Youth” is considered to cover people aged 10-29, though many indicators are measured from the age of 15 and are drawn from a range of statistical sources.
The new Australian index, a variation of the global index launched by the Commonwealth Secretariat, was compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace, Canberra and Victoria universities, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Australian Institute for Health and Welfare and lobby group Youth Action.
The index measures youth development defined as “enhancing the status of young people, empowering them to build on their competencies and capabilities for life. It will enable them to contribute and benefit from a politically stable, economically viable and legally supportive environment, ensuring their full participation as active citizens in their countries”.
The good news is that Tasmania is the only state or territory that has seen a decline in its overall index score measured over the past decade.
However, the report highlights some disturbing gaps between jurisdictions, and particularly in urban-rural divides and between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.
Overall, South Australia ranks above only Tasmania among the states. Young South Australians
are more likely to be victims of assault than anywhere else on the mainland.
One in 10 young South Australians are assaulted each year, twice the rate recorded in Victoria. In rural SA the figure is 12 per cent, about 1.5 times the rate for urban areas.
On another health and wellbeing measure, more than a quarter (28 per cent) of SA youths use illegal drugs each year, a much higher rate than New South Wales but considerably lower than Victoria and Queensland.
In education the SA results are mixed. The biggest positive is that just 2 per cent of South Australians attain no higher education level than Year 10, a figure five times lower than the next best state of Victoria.
But the report also tells the familiar tale of SA’s poor NAPLAN results and attendance rates for the annual tests, though it relies on statistics that don’t take account of improvements in the past two years.
“Out of all the states and territories, SA has seen the largest decline in its education domain score since 2006, with a 7 per cent decrease. This deterioration is driven by an increase in proportion of Year 9 students who were absent for NAPLAN literacy and numeracy tests,” the report says.
In the “civic participation” domain, fewer than half of young South Australians are involved in the arts or cultural activities and less than a quarter do volunteer work – both poor results by national standards – but the report does note a “dramatically improved” score in this domain over the past five years.
Growing numbers of young people on primary, secondary or university student representative councils boosted the results for political participation.
A major problem for SA is not having enough young people. The youth (10-29) population grew by about 70,000, or 26 per cent, over the decade to 2015 to reach around 431,600. But most of that growth had happened by 2010, when the youth proportion of the total population peaked at 24.1 per cent.
Over the next five years the state’s youth population rose by just 570 people, and the youth proportion is now estimated at 23.1 per cent, the second lowest in the nation.
The report highlights “dramatic increases” in youth suicide in Queensland and Tasmania and links drug use figures with suicide rates in those states.
It says a national rise in sexually transmissible infections at a time of “unprecedented” health and sex education is “bewildering”.
“This level of risk-taking behaviour amongst young people is clearly ill-informed and for young women in particular will have serious consequences if their sexual health goes unchecked,” it says.
On employment and opportunity, the report says every state “has lost considerable ground” over the past decade, with “significant increases” in young people being unable to find jobs.
“This does need urgent attention to understand the future opportunities, what vocational training is needed, and how to improve access to and affordability of education,” it says.
Source: http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/snapshot-of-australias-youth-reveals-troubling-trends/news-story/73d68a74e9e38a1bed2def82c6c28d11
YOUNG CHRISTIAN WORKERS 