The crucial link between schooling and child safety

CHE RESEARCH BITES

By Adam A. Dzulkipli, Nicole Black, David W. Johnston and Leonie Segal

25 September, 2025

Keeping children at school longer reduces their risk of maltreatment and acute health problems, showing that schools play an important role in keeping children safe.

Abuse and neglect experienced during childhood severely harms children’s development, contributing to a variety of adverse outcomes throughout life. Therefore reducing children’s exposure to maltreatment and its harms is a key policy objective for governments across the world. Our recent study using data from South Australia reveals an important connection between schooling and child safety.

In 2009, South Australia introduced new laws which raised the school-leaving age from 16 to 17. Comparing children who were affected by this education reform with children who were unaffected, we found that the extra compulsory year in school was beneficial for children’s safety: it significantly reduced reports of child maltreatment and decreased emergency department visits among adolescents with past exposure to maltreatment.

To put things into context, our estimates suggest that the reform led to 92 fewer children experiencing new reported maltreatment each year. Based on well-established cost figures of maltreatment, these results translate to annual savings of approximately $46 million in financial costs (eg: government services use, productivity losses, healthcare system costs) and non-financial costs (eg: quality of life losses, premature mortality). The reform additionally led to 157 fewer children attending the emergency department each year.

These findings suggest that extending adolescents’ time in school shields vulnerable youth from harm. Policy interventions aimed at increasing student retention and engagement in school can serve as a powerful tool for child protection, leading to greater benefits than previously realised.

Adam A. Dzulkipli, Nicole Black, David W. Johnston, Leonie Segal; Safer in School? The Impact of Compulsory Schooling on Maltreatment and Associated Harms. The Review of Economics and Statistics 2025; doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/rest.a.280

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CHE Research Bites are short, easy-to-understand summaries of our recent academic papers highlighting new evidence and insights on topical issues in the health and healthcare sectors.

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