MissingSchool CEO, Megan Gilmour, was featured in an article from Education Review. To view the original article click here.
The recent allegations of grooming and sexual abuse at Fitzroy Community School describe alleged conduct spanning decades at a small registered school that parents trusted because they felt mainstream schooling had nothing for their children. For families with nowhere else to go, the school represented hope. Instead, police are now investigating claims of profound betrayal.
These investigations will run their course, but they leave a far bigger question than what happened at one school. Who is watching the places children end up in when school stops working for them?
Education ministers are now debating AI in classrooms, device bans and the future of schooling. Meanwhile, growing numbers of Australian children are not in mainstream classrooms at all.
When school is inaccessible, families are increasingly pushed towards a rapidly expanding ecosystem of so-called alternative providers operating with far less oversight, accountability and safeguarding than the schools they have left behind. A system that refuses to modernise is doing the pushing.
Australia’s school system has been haemorrhaging students. In 2025, 37.9% of students in Years 1 to 10 attended school less than 90% of the time. Add the senior years where the national data doesn’t count – but where attendance is worse – and roughly 1.6 million children were persistently or chronically absent.
Some face medical or mental health crises. Others are dealing with trauma, transport, safety, disengagement or family circumstances. Our education system’s response has been to run a business-as-usual model, count physical attendance and wait for children to come back.
The trend shows they’re not coming back. They’re staying home, or going elsewhere. Home education registrations jumped 92% between 2020 and 2024. The number of children who have drifted into alternative education, or nothing at all, is anyone’s guess.
Into this vacuum, a shadow sector is booming. We’re seeing a rise in flexible and alternative education providers, online borderless platforms, and bespoke “small” in-person operators, many with minimal qualifications, oversight and zero safeguarding obligations.
Learning is largely being pushed online, but without the guardrails. If we’re serious about the online safety of young people beyond the social media ban, and the retreat from screens in mainstream classrooms, surely these are the places it needs to reach.
