This dataset provides information about the religious persuasion of students at the aggregate level and for individual government schools as collected on the school enrolment form.

Data notes and limitations:

• It is stated on government school enrolment forms that this question is optional.

• Information provided is based on data extracted from the department's centralised enrolment system (ERN) in Term 2 every year.

• Data is captured at the point of enrolment and may or may not be updated in ERN as students' progress through schooling. Schools update this information at a local level to support their organisation of SRE/SEE classes.

• Data is suppressed for privacy purposes. Where a blank value is recorded against a religion, it indicates nil or 5 or fewer students for the religion.

• Just over 40 per cent of the 795,000 students enrolled in NSW government schools have one of the following values recorded:

  • Unknown/Not provided
  • Not stated (intentionally)
  • No religion.

Data source:

• NSW Department of Education school enrolment system (ERN).