Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, , 3:06:56 to 3:12:50
Officials explain the "right-sizing" of disability loading under the NCCD, aiming to ensure students receive appropriate levels of support based on functional impact.
Topics: Education, Government spending
Speakers: Ms. Meg Brighton, Senator Matt O'Sullivan, Ms Danielle Donegan, Mr. Tony Cook, Unknown Speaker
>> All right. Well, they'll be um hopefully communicating to schools uh parents about what what the impact will be for them and as you say, it's up to them to do that, but um that transparency would be important for parents to know. Um I I want to go to the NCCD >> uh ask about the savings measures announced in the budget around the NCCD and disability loadings. Can I ask how you guaranteeing that those cuts do not fall disproportionately on independent schools which do not have the protection of a system that can absorb or distribute cuts?
>> Thank you, Senator.
>> In particular, how how are you going to ensure that those cuts do not fall disproportionately on u majority indigenous schools uh or special assistance schools in particular?
>> Yeah. Uh, Senator, thanks thanks for the question. If I can just contextualize that um for you. So about a third about 27% of Australian students need an adjustment um for a disability to access schooling and about 20% of Australian school students, I think it's 19.7, they receive an adjustment that is funded. So the students with disability funding is for students with a disability and so that loading is so that those students with the disability can access education on the same basis as every other student. Um and the funding is to provide an adjustment that exists because of the functional impact on disability. And the reason I stress that is that uh the NCCD is not a general loading for disadvantage. um or complexity or vulnerability. We have other loadings. Um you mentioned Aboriginal and to majority Aboriginal and Toouristra Islander schools. Um there is a specific cohort loading around um First Nations students. There is also specific cohort loadings around disadvantage. Um so the work we have been doing around the NCCD is about making sure that students are getting the adjustments they need to access education and uh we've been working with the non-government sector and states and territories on clarifying the guidelines to ensure that students are getting what they need to access education. Um and um so when you when you use the language when you refer to the cuts we would the way we're looking at it is right sizing and making sure the students are getting what they need to access education and one of the areas we've been looking at is uh we have three categories of funded adjustments and the top category is what we call an extensive adjustment and these are the young people that in order to access education they need the most personalized targeted intensive levels of support to go to school and to learn. Um, and what we have found through our um, uh, what the data tells us, but also through our auditing program, there are certain cohorts of students that have been funded at that level, but actually it's they don't have a disability that warrants that level of intensity. So, we've been working with the states and territories and the non-government sector to clarify that.
We we've heard directly from independent faith schools that are majority Aboriginal tourist islander uh cohort. Uh they say they know now stand to lose between 25 and 30% of their funding a result of those changes. H how is that an acceptable outcome for those students particularly with vulnerable students?
Um, Senator, um, if if outside the committee you would like to provide us with an individual school examples, we'd be happy to look at that. Um, the levels of supports that we expect for students at those higher classification level have been very consistent since 2015 um when the guidelines were first introduced. Uh so um it may be that some schools haven't been uh applying the guidelines in the way that it was expected to um and that might change a profile of a school and the funding that they received but without the specifics it's it's hard to talk in the general unless Miss Dunigan wants to add
>> I can only talk in averages but to to give you a bit more detail. Uh so when we look at the sectors specifically I can talk about the total student population with a disability. So for the government sector, the total population of students with a disability is 20 28.6%. In the independent sector, it's 24.4% and in the Catholic sector, it's 24.3%. So that's a lot of students with a disability. However, when you look then towards the students who require an extensive adjustment, that's 2.8% of students. So that's a relatively small number. So when you take into account what Miss Moratner has said and the stats that say that the uh the overall level of adjustments that require extensive adjustments are around 2.8% we'd really need to look into the detail to be able to understand what's happening for about 25% of funding
>> and we we actually do that senator. So when there's wildly different data that a school has from year to year, I know Miss Brighton has spoken to me about this, we actually contact the school and speak to the school about why is your data suddenly so different to what it was previously. We did I don't know how many schools we've done this year, but quite a few. >> Um but again, if there's particular examples, we're very happy to look at those examples if you're if you're able to give them to us out of session. The