A multi-million dollar education program touted to help disengaged students has reached only one-fifth of young Victorians eligible.
The Navigator program was last year rolled out across the state aiming to reduce students whose attendance had fallen below 30 per cent.
As part of the program, students are returned to the mainstream education system when they have a sustained attendance above 70 per cent.
Just 1.3 per cent of all Victorian students aged 12 to 17 are even eligible for the program, but of those, only about 20 per cent were referred, according to an Auditor-Generals report tabled in parliament on Wednesday.
The report said referrals were often dependant on where the students lived, with referrals ranging from 10.6 per cent in North Eastern Melbourne to 41.3 per cent in the region of Ovens Murray in the state's north-east.
The Auditor-General found it could take up to six weeks for a referral to be finalised, with a student then waiting up to six months before they received any support.
The report noted the Department of Education and Training's limited data collection meant it could not clearly demonstrate whether or not Navigator was effective.
It has cost about $14 million per year to run the program.
The Auditor-General made four recommendations to the department, such as an engagement strategy to ensure schools better understood Navigator and refer more eligible students.
It also recommended the department have a strategy so referrals was applied consistently across the state, and create a monitoring, evaluation and reporting framework so more data could also be collected.
The Department of Education and Training has accepted the report's recommendations in full.
Australian Associated Press
