Impact

Figure 1: Student Course enrolments by postcode

The Past 5 Years

Grok Academy, and its predecessors Grok Learning and the Australian Computing Academy, have seen a strong growth of student and teacher enrolments in the five year period since the FY16/17 The number of unique students grew from 20,697 (FY16/17) to 172,201 (FY20/21) by a factor of 8.3. Unique teacher numbers increased from 2,243 to 5,119 in the same period, a factor of 2.3. These numbers demonstrate that the teachers see increasing value in our classroom activities and use them with more of their students.

During the financial year 2020-2021, 172,201 unique Australian students were newly enrolled in the classroom activities. This includes primary and secondary (foundation to year 12), excluding tertiary and those students that participated anonymously. The total number of student course enrolments was 408,178. 5,119 teachers and 3,017 schools participated in the classroom activities. Participation refers to teacher or student enrolments, or the opening or submission of a classroom activity problem by teachers or students. Students from all across Australia participated in the online activities. Their location fundamentally matches the general distribution of settlement of the general population along the coastal regions, major remote and rural centres as well as lightly-populated areas.

National by states and territories

Most of the students enrolled in the classroom activities are from NSW (33.1%), followed by Vic (20%), WA (17.3%), QLD (16.9%), SA (5.7%), Tas (3.4%), ACT (3%) and NT (0.6%). Compared against the primary and secondary student population, as reported by ACARA (2018), NSW, WA, Tas and the ACT have a higher than expected participation in the classroom activities, whilst the participation from QLD, Vic, SA and the NT is below par.

Figure 2: Student enrolments by states and territories

Figure 3: Enrolled students by state: classroom activities vs. general student population

Figure 4: Student enrolments by school type

National by type

The majority of the enrolled students (51.9%) came from secondary schools, followed by students from combined schools 32.6% and primary schools (15.4%). 0.1% of student enrolments originated from special schools.

National by sector

In-line with the general distribution of students across the government, Catholic, and Independent sectors, The majority of student enrolments came from Government schools (49.7%), followed by independent schools (25.7%) and Catholic schools (24.6%). Compared against the schools student population by sector, as reported by ACARA (2018), the Challenges have a higher than expected participation in Catholic and Independent school whilst the participation from Government schools is below par.

Figure 5: Student enrolments by sector

Enrolled students by ICSEA

ICSEA is a scale which allows for comparisons among schools with similar students. ICSEA stands for the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage. ACARA states that “ICSEA provides an indication of the socio-educational backgrounds of students; it has nothing to do with the staff, school facilities or teaching programmes at the school. ICSEA isn’t a school rating.” During the 2020-21 financial year, students with an ICSEA ranging from 500 to 1,300 were enrolled in the classroom activities. The largest number of students (71,173) originated from the ICSEA band of 1,000 to 1,099. The split of students below/above ICSEA 1,000 is 22%/78%. For the general student population (ACARA), the split is 29%/71%.

Figure 6: Student enrolments by ICSEA

Enrolled students by gender

The classroom activities enjoyed a balanced use by students from both main genders in the 2020-21 financial year. The Unknown category is applied when teachers do not provide student gender as part of a manual upload, or when education systems do not provide this data through the single sign on interface.

Figure 7: Enrolled student by gender

Enrolled students by year level

Years 7 and 8 account for most of the student enrolments in the 2020-21 financial year. They are followed by student enrolments in years 9, 6, 5, 10, 4, 11, 3, 12, 2 and 1. Junior secondary are important years in which students used the classroom activities to learn about Digital Technologies.

Figure 8: Enrolled student by year level

Enrolments by Challenge

These were our top 20 classroom activities and the number of their respective student enrolments in the 2020-21 financial year. The most popular classroom activity was the Information Privacy and Security Cyber Challenge for secondary students with 32,074 student enrolments, followed by the Introduction to Programming (Python) with 28,827 student enrolments and the Python for Beginners Challenge (13,370).

Figure 9: Enrolled student by classroom activity