Determinants of Students' Quality of School Life: A Path Model

This study examined factors contributing to the quality of school life of secondary school students. A path model, expressing interrelationships between students' background characteristics, their expectations of schools, the perceived quality of both the formal and the informal school curriculum, the classroom environment and students' quality of school life, was developed and tested. The sample comprised 8265 Grade 12 students from 70 schools in New South Wales, Australia. Analysis indicated that, after controlling for other variables in the model, students' experience of the classroom environment was the single most important factor explaining their quality of school life. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.