(Australia) 27 percent of students have a disability; eight in every classroom

May 21, 2026, 2GB Sydney:  'She's in tears' - Teachers struggle as special needs enrollments soar 

AUDIO:

The number of kids with a disability has exploded.

There’s now eight students in every classroom who are considered disabled.

That’s according to new data from the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority. They say 1.1 million students now receive an educational adjustment due to a disability.

More than half of them have cognitive disabilities. That’s any disorder that impacts mental processing or concentration, including dyslexia.

There’s been a surge in students with ADHD and autism.

One in 10 students now have a socio-emotional disability, including autism, ADHD, or anxiety.

In 2019, only six percent of students had these conditions. Now they make up nearly 10 percent of students with a disability.

The blow out has happened over the past seven years.

In 2019, 20 percent of students were deemed to have a disability.

NOW, it’s 27 percent.

And the strain is being felt by teachers, particularly in public schools.

One teacher says in her class, 11 out of 26 students have been diagnosed with a disability.

Another teacher has told the Australian Newspaper, “I had a class with 22 out of 24 students with ADHD, autism or cognitive delays.”

The teacher says, “I was told it was not a high needs class.”

Guest was interviewed talking about his daughter’s experience as a teacher.

She’s been a teacher for three or four years. She loves the job. She comes home most days, before the last two years, with a smile on her face. She loves the job.

But in the last two or three years, she gets three to four special needs children every class. She teaches kindergarten. She gets three to four particularly high needs children—some of them need fulltime care.

They run out of class, they remove their pants, they urinate in the corner. They run down the hall, out to the playground. They open windows. They jump off desks.

She’s got no support. She gets no support. She comes home most afternoons now in tears.

She gets physically assaulted. She’s been assaulted three times this year alone.

Only recently last week, a major scratch down the side of her face from this one child. It’s not the child’s fault. We understand that, but she gets no support. . . .

She can’t teach the kids if she’s chasing a kid down the corridor.