The Herald-Sun has reported recently on inequities in the Federal funding of disability assistance in schools.
The report was triggered by an undertaking by the Federal government to “claw back $472m from school disability funding amid claims wealthy private schools are exploiting loopholes.”
According to the article, “… educators warn the compliance blitz is a Band-Aid solution that barely scratches the surface of a broken system, known as the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data (NCCD) framework. They say the changes won’t fix the glaring loopholes allowing elite private schools to rake in cash, while their underfunded public counterparts can’t afford to meet the framework’s criteria to receive the funding to begin with.”
This inequity arises from a rule that the school must provide unfunded disability support for 10 weeks before applying for Federal financial assistance. The article explains what this means:
Consequently, 83 per cent of public school principals are poaching funds from other budgets to help students who desperately need support, costing schools $822m nationally.
Meanwhile deep-pocketed private schools – where fees exceed $25,000 a year – are securing massive disability funding increases because they can easily foot the bill for the 10-week “adjustment period”.
The article quotes Australian Education Union President Correna Haythorpe: “There are more than 200,000 students in the public school system who have been assessed as having a disability, yet receive no disability loadings. At the same time we have seen disability funding to private schools grow by $1.4bn from 2020 to 2024.”
Our view
Parents Victoria CEO Gail McHardy was approached for comment by the Herald-Sun, but her comments were not published in the article. Here are Gail’s comments:
Parents Victoria (PV) continues to hear that many students with disabilities are not receiving consistent support at school, particularly when they fall outside targeted funding categories.
Schools should not have to absorb the cost of essential disability support through already stretched budgets.
Teachers and school staff are doing extraordinary work, but they cannot continue to carry growing levels of unmet need without adequate resourcing.
Parents tell us that support depends on a school’s capacity to cope, rather than a child’s actual needs. No child with disability should miss out on support because of funding gaps, delays or administrative barriers.
PV acknowledges the Victorian Government’s continued commitment to Disability Inclusion reform and the recent budget announcements to provide ongoing funding support. Sustained investment is important and welcomed. However, the key issue for families is whether this translates into timely, practical support in classrooms, including specialist staff, aides, adjustments, allied health access and teacher capacity.
Concerns about transparency and equity in disability funding distribution deserve serious public attention. Public schools are supporting increasingly complex student needs and must be properly funded to do so.
All parents and carers want confidence that disability funding systems are fair, transparent and focused on student needs.