May 2, 2024, Guardian: Funding for Australian school students with disabilities ‘woefully inadequate’, principals say
Principals and teachers say funding to support students with disabilities is “woefully inadequate”, with schools diverting resources from other areas of their budgets to meet their needs.
A new national survey of 15,000 principals and teachers reports that just 11% of principals feel they have sufficient resources to support the educational needs of students with disabilities.
When asked which resources they were lacking, 80% of principals said they needed extra assistance in the classroom, with more than half nominating more teachers, specialist support and professional development as lacking.
Almost 20% of the principals surveyed in the Australian Education Union survey said they lacked “appropriate hygiene facilities”, while about half said they did not have appropriate learning spaces to accommodate children with disabilities.
The average amount of funding that principals are reallocating from other areas to support students with a disability is $158,000 [$104K] this year, a 20% increase in the past 12 months. This equates to almost $1bn [$660M] when averaged out across 89% of Australian schools. . . .
Another in the state reported that a level 3 autistic child who was non-verbal was allocated just six hours of teacher aide time when he required 30 hours, which the school funded by diverting other resources.
“He is a safety risk to himself when not monitored closely [and] by giving time to this child we take from others who need it,” the survey was told.
An ACT-based school reported a $300,000 [$198K] staffing debt each year in order to fund assistants rather than go without, while a Melbourne-based primary school reported a $500,000 [$330K] deficit as a result of needing extra support staff who were not otherwise funded. . . .
Teachers also reported that students categorised as needing the lowest level of support – requiring Quality Differentiated Teaching Practice – in fact needed additional funding support above this level.
Teachers listed needs such as assistive technology, more time, more professional support, smaller class sizes and greater access to teacher’s aides as among the most pressing. . . .
Only about a third of teachers reported that the professional development training they received had given them “the knowledge and skills” needed to teach students with a disability, compared with about half in 2020.
The AEU national president, Correna Haythorpe, said modern classrooms were increasingly complex and support for children with disabilities needed to be prioritised as part of the current negotiations for the next national schools reform agreement.
“We are seeing rapid increase with respect to students with disability but also significant concerns around the lack of funding that is available to meet those needs,” she told Guardian Australia.
“Students with disabilities are not getting enough dedicated funding from government. The problem is real, schools are trying to manage this in the best way that they can, and they have to be backed by governments with the resources that they need.”
Haythorpe said there was a “joint responsibility” for both state and federal governments to improve access to education for students with disabilities. . . .
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