Submission

to the

Review of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992

October 2025

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Australian Education Union
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Telephone: redacted
Facsimile: redacted
Web: www.aeutfederal.org.au\ E-mail: redacted

Introduction

The Australian Education Union (AEU) represents over 185,000 educator members employed in the public primary, secondary, early childhood, and TAFE sectors throughout Australia. The AEU believes that a high quality and properly resourced public education accessible to all is a key component of more equitable education system and a fundamental entitlement of all Australian children and young people. As such, the AEU welcomes this opportunity to present our views to this Review of the Disability Discrimination Act (the Act).

This submission will focus on the following recommendations of the Disability Royal Commission that were accepted by the Commonwealth in their response and as detailed in the Issues Paper as they pertain to students and teachers in schools and TAFE:

Strengthening the duty to provide adjustments for people with disability (Recommendations 4.25 & 4.26)
Protection against the suspension or exclusion of students with disability (Recommendation 7.2)

A well-resourced public education system that values diversity, understands social and cognitive development, engages all learners through inclusive processes and is responsive to fundamental human needs, has the potential to develop actively engaged, resilient and connected members of the wider community.

The AEU affirms that Australia’s public education system must value and provide a range of services, programs and educational settings to ensure the inclusion of all students. This must be delivered by a fully resourced public education system that provides the basis for fairness and equality of opportunity in education across early childhood, schools and TAFE.1

The AEU notes that with reference to education the Disability Discrimination Act aims to ensure that “people with disability achieve their full potential through education and learning.”2 The submission will demonstrate how the extraordinary efforts of teachers and leaders in the public education system to achieve this aim is restricted by a fundamental disconnect between the level of need and profound shortcomings in the way in which government resources are allocated to students with disability.

1 AEU Disability in Public Education Policy 2021. p.1

2 Department of Social Services, Australia’s Disability Strategy 2021–2031, Department of Social Services, Australian Government, 2021, pp 32–35. Cited in https://www.ag.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-08/DDA-Review-Issues-Paper.PDF p.5

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The fundamental principle of inclusion

The UNESCO Policy Guidelines on Inclusion in Education states:

“As an overall principle, [inclusion] should guide all education policies and practices, starting from the fact that education is a basic human right and the foundation for a just and equal society… Looking at education through an inclusive lens implies a shift from seeing the child as the problem to seeing the education system as the problem.”3

The AEU is supportive of this statement and of greater inclusion of students with disabilities in mainstream classrooms when this inclusion is in the educational best interests of the students. However, it is essential that teachers and support staff have been appropriately trained to work with students with disability and have access to ongoing training and professional development. It is also essential that there is an adequate allocation of additional teacher resource and/or education support staff hours to support students.

Federal, State and Territory governments have a responsibility to ensure the full resourcing of school systems to allow the increased use of appropriate settings for students with disability within mainstream schools and have responsibility for devising appropriate policy settings to ensure that this takes place. The AEU emphasises the importance of Governments providing resources and supportive policy for special schools in addition to developing support services and settings to help students with disability in mainstream schools.

The AEU believes that students with disability should be enrolled in the most appropriate setting for each individual student under a process which:

ensures the most appropriate educational enrolment of the student
is cognisant of the professional judgement of teachers, support staff, education leaders and other professionals
involves students, parents and carers and acknowledges their preferences
gives due consideration to the needs of all students in any educational setting.4

Students with disability must have appropriate and fully funded resources to meet their needs

The AEU Disability in Public Education Policy 2021 makes numerous declarations on the necessary conditions to achieve this, including the following:

Achieving a high quality education for all is only possible through a fully resourced public education system.

3 UNESCO, Policy Guidelines on Inclusion in Education, 2009, p. 8, 14

4 Queensland Teachers Union, The education of students with a disability, 2019, p1

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The Commonwealth Government in partnership with state and territory governments must maintain responsibility for ongoing funding in all sectors of public education.
Commonwealth and State and territory governments must work in partnership with stakeholders, the teaching profession and their union to develop an ongoing strategy for systemic provision of public education for students with disability across all settings.
Students with disability and additional needs from disadvantaged backgrounds must be provided with equitable access to high quality public education.
Commonwealth, state and territory governments should legislate to guarantee the provision of early intervention programs for all children who require them.
Governments must ensure that the relevant professionals (including and primarily) classroom teachers have been appropriately trained to work with students with disabilities and be provided with time for and access to ongoing training and professional development.
The pattern of disability and hence learning patterns are changing and students are presenting with disabilities that are increasingly complex, unfamiliar and in many instances less visible. Increased complexity of the student cohort and increased demands of governments and systems place multiple demands upon the teaching profession which must be mitigated.
Governments must ensure that students with disability have access to a broad range of education settings to meet the needs of all students. This requires the provision of adequate resources, necessary adjustments of teaching and learning programs the modification of equipment and facilities, in-service and special education/inclusion training for everyone who works in the educational setting.
Partnerships between specialised settings and neighbouring mainstream schools, that are appropriately staffed and resourced, should be developed in order to facilitate the smooth transition of students with disability between specialised and mainstream settings. This transition should be flexible in nature to meet the needs of both the student and school.
The AEU is committed to developing and maintaining ongoing partnerships between Federal and State systems, educational communities, advocacy groups and families to accelerate proper funding and to deliver better educational outcomes.5

The AEU notes that the Disability Royal Commission recommended replacing references to “reasonable adjustments” in the Act with “adjustments” and recommended “creating a “stand-alone duty to provide adjustments” to make it unlawful for a duty holder to fail or

5 AEU Disability in Public Education Policy 2021, pp.3-4.

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refuse to make an adjustment unless making the adjustment would impose unjustifiable hardship.”6 The Royal Commission noted that this would streamline the legislative test and clarify that the only consideration for duty holders is whether making an adjustment would impose an unjustifiable hardship.

In referencing the need for this change the Issues Paper asserts that:

“In the education sector, the Disability Royal Commission heard that the reasonable adjustments provisions are not well understood, and schools are not agreeing to adjustments requested by parents, students or allied health practitioners. The Disability Royal Commission also heard that many teachers have a positive attitude towards inclusion but need more planning time, training, and resources.”7

The AEU disputes that teachers and school leaders and teachers do not understand their responsibility to make reasonable adjustments, however, we agree that teachers require greater support in “planning, training and resources”.

Resourcing for students with disability is by its nature intensive. This resourcing must continue to ensure adherence to philosophies of equity, social justice and inclusivity. Despite numerous State and Commonwealth government reviews over the past two decades identifying serious deficiencies in the resourcing of the education of young Australians with disability there has been little progress in this regard. While governments have talked about the problem many thousands of children with disability have started and finished school without seeing any improvement in the resources provided by governments to them.

Almost 70% of students with disability attend public schools, which work extremely hard to ensure that issues such as access, specialist support, and health and wellbeing are appropriate so that all students can learn in a high-quality, safe environment. However, the stark reality is that this requires resources, and while the number of students eligible for support through disability loadings continues to grow, the total available funding per student has been set at an insufficient level.

We note that in its response to the Disability Royal Commission the Commonwealth Government stated:

“In education, the Australian Government is providing an estimated $3.7 billion in 2024 to support schools to implement reasonable adjustments through the Schooling Resource Standard students with disability loading. The Department of Education will also commence work to inform national system reforms to drive more accessible and inclusive school education and improve outcomes for students with disabilities. To complement this, the Government produces resources to support students, parents, and carers to understand their rights; and support school staff to understand their obligations.”8

6 Australian Government, Attorney-General’s Department, Disability Discrimination Act 1992 Review Issues Paper, 2025, p.47 7 Australian Government, Attorney-General’s Department, Disability Discrimination Act 1992 Review Issues Paper, 2025, p.47 8 Australian Government Response to the Disability Royal Commission, 2024, p. 26

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Rather than not understanding their duty to provide reasonable adjustments, public school leaders have told the AEU for over a decade that they are simply not provided with the resources that are required to provide necessary adjustments for every student that requires them. To be clear – this is not the result of a failing or a lack of understanding on behalf of teachers or school leaders, it is a failing of successive Commonwealth and state and territory governments to ensure that minimum per student funding requirements are met and that disability loadings are properly calculated and assigned through accessible and fair assessment processes.

Flawed assessment and funding methodologies means that students with disability are currently missing out on the support they need

The original 2011 Review of Funding for Schooling identified disability as one of the key factors of disadvantage affecting school attainment and achievement, and made a key recommendation that resourcing for students with disability be “set according to the level of reasonable educational adjustment required to allow the student to participate in schooling on the same basis as students without disability.”9 Additional targeted resources were viewed by the review panel as being a basic matter of equity that will keep more students in schools longer, raise skill levels and ultimately lift workforce participation of persons with disability.

The first full Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on school students with disability (NCCD) took place in 2015 following a gradual phasing in of the collection from 2012. The NCCD entails informed professional judgement by teachers to determine the extent of adjustments made to enable participation of students with disability on the same basis as students without disability.

The NCCD has provided a national definition of disability support available to students across four levels of increasing frequency and intensity of adjustment as shown in Box 1, below. 10

9 Gonski et al, Review of Funding for Schooling—Final Report, 2011, p. 185. 10 National School Resourcing Board, Review of the loading for students with disability: Final report, December 2019, p. 20.

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Box 1: Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD)

NCCD gives us a national definition of a student with disability.

The NCCD reports school students with disability by the level of support they receive to access and participate in learning, rather than on category or medical diagnosis of a specific disability.

The NCCD has four levels of adjustment: support provided within QDTP, supplementary, substantial and extensive. The frequency and intensity of the adjustments increases through the levels of adjustment.

Quality differentiated teaching practice

Some students may not need adjustments beyond those expected as part of quality teaching/school practice, which responds to different learning needs of all students.
Adjustments are made infrequently as occasional action, frequently as low level action such as monitoring.

Supplementary

Students receive adjustments that are supplementary to the strategies and resources available for all students in the school.
The adjustments occur for particular activities at specific times throughout the week.

Substantial

Students have more substantial support needs, and receive essential adjustments and considerable adult assistance.
Adjustments to the usual educational program occur at most times on most days.

Extensive

Students have very high support needs and are provided with extensive targeted measures and sustained levels of intensive support.
Adjustments to the usual educational program occur at all times.

Further information is available at www.nccd.edu.au.

The NCCD was linked to loadings for students with disability in 2018, including the application of the four adjustment levels, with only the Supplementary, Substantial and Extensive levels as shown in table 1 in receipt of funding loadings. Three of the NCCD categories attract loadings set as additional funding applied as a percentage of the base Schooling Resource Standard (SRS – the minimal funding level required for most students to meet minimum achievement benchmarks) as shown in table 1.

Table 1: 2025 primary student with disability SRS loadings by NCCD level of adjustment

School level	Estimated SRS funding amount in 2025	Supplementary	Substantial	Extensive
Primary student	$13,991	42% ($5,876)	146% ($20,427)	312% ($43,652)

Students with disability assessed in the fourth level - Quality Differentiated Teaching Practice (QDTP) do not receive any additional SRS loadings. The adjustments offered under QDTP are described as including “a differentiated approach to curriculum delivery and assessment that anticipates and responds to students’ learning differences” and “personalised learning that is implemented without drawing on additional resource”11. This description is vague enough that a significant range of adjustments can be categorised within it. Additionally, the NCCD requirement that adjustments must be made for at least ten weeks in the prior year before being resourced make it very difficult for underfunded public schools to demonstrate that they have met the NCCD requirements to access funded loadings. The impact of this is that there is a substantial and increasing number of public school students who have been

11 https://www.nccd.edu.au/wider-support-materials/support-provided-within-quality-differentiated-teaching-practice

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deemed to have a disability, but who are categorised as QDTP and are not in receipt of any additional funding to support their learning.

Figure 1: Public School % growth of students with disability 2015-2024

[Chart showing public school percentage growth of students with disability from 2015 to 2024 ranging from -5% to 55%]

In 2024 there were 711,146 students with disability enrolled in public schools - 239,000 and 50.6% more than the 472,139 enrolled in 2015. There were 505,566 public school students who a supplementary, substantial or extensive educational adjustment due to disability reported in the NCCD representing 19.3% of all public school student enrolments.12 This is an increase from 13.6% of all students in 2015.

Over the decade to 2024 there has also been a significant increase, from 5.8% of all enrolments to 7.9% of all enrolments, in the proportion of students who are characterised as having a disability under the NCCD but are assessed at the unfunded QDTP level. This means that in 2024 there were 206,941 students classified as having disability but unfunded for educational adjustments, this is an increase of 64,124 from 2015.13This means that the level of unfunded students assessed as requiring an adjustment but receiving no funding has increased by 45% over the decade.

The impact of this resource gap on teachers and principals is very evident in survey data collected by the AEU. The AEU’s 2024 State of our Schools survey of public-school teachers, principals and education support staff found:

12 https://www.acara.edu.au/reporting/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia/school-students-with-disability 13 https://www.acara.edu.au/reporting/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia/school-students-with-disability

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81% of principals and 80% of teachers said that they have students in their school assessed within the non-funded Quality Differentiated Teaching Practice NCCD category who require additional support above that level.
89% of all principals say they do not have sufficient resources to appropriately meet the needs of students with disability at their school.
84% of teachers said the most lacking resource to support Students with Disability was specialist educational support staff.
89% of principals reallocate funding from other areas to support students with disability at an average of $158,820 per school, which totals $955 million of funding reallocated to support students with disability when extrapolated nationally.14

A further and significant issue with the resourcing of disability loadings for students in public schools is that many public school teachers and leaders do not have the required staffing or time available to them to engage in the repeated assessment and application processes necessary to ensure that their students receive their proper loading and that a lack of resources often prevents public schools from providing the adjustments necessary for the necessary period of at least ten weeks to receive the loadings prior to the funding being guaranteed. These requirements of the NCCD assessment process make it extraordinarily difficult for under resourced public schools to fulfill their “positive duty” as required by the proposed changes to the Act.

The gap between student need and the resources available to attempt to address that need gap in the different school sectors is borne out by the change in the percentage of students in receipt of funded disability loadings by school sector, particularly in recent years. From 2015 to 2024 the percentage of students in independent schools who receive the supplementary disability loading has increased from 6.9% to 10.3% and in Catholic schools it has increased from 8.6% to 12.8%. In public schools the increase has been much lower, from 8.3% to 9.0%. These figures suggest that there are significant numbers of students with disability in public schools who are not in receipt of a disability adjustment or are not in receipt of the correct level of adjustment and thus missing out on necessary support. Indeed, the AEU has had numerous reports from AEU Branches and Associated Bodies (in particular from New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania) that this is the case.

School systems have ultimate authority for ensuring that students with disability have access to the support that they need to participate in education on the same basis as students without disability, but it is the responsibility of governments who administer and fund these systems to ensure that schools have the resources necessary to support students with disability. It is also the responsibility of governments to ensure that schools have enough resources and the capacity to complete the administrative and bureaucratic requirements that the system demands.

As the results above show, and as confirmed by the assertion in the Review’s Issues Paper, too often the responsibility for ensuring that students receive the support they require falls to

14 AEU, 2024 State of Our Schools, unpublished survey data

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teachers and principals rather than on the authorities which manage school systems and the State, Territory and Commonwealth Governments that fund them.

All education stakeholders, including governments, must ensure that all schools systems have the resource and staff capacity required to assess students with disability and attention must be paid to ensuring that all students are able to access the level of support appropriate to their needs. To achieve its aim of eradicating discrimination against people with disability, this Review must ensure that the proposed revised responsibility to make “adjustments” rather than “reasonable adjustments” rests with those who determine the amount of resource available for such adjustments.

The AEU notes the following from the Commonwealth Government response to the Disability Royal Commission

“The Australian Government and state and territory governments support the Disability Royal Commission’s vision for more accessible and inclusive education for school students with disability.

Education Ministers commit to work in partnership with people with disability to set out how this vision will be achieved over time.”15

Governments as a priority must ensure that all schools systems have the resource and staff capacity required to assess students with disability and attention must be paid to ensuring that all students are able to access the level of support appropriate to their needs. In order to provide students with disability with the best possible opportunity to achieve and engage, the Commonwealth and all state and territory governments should take action on the following:

Accept that governments are ultimately responsible for the provision of necessary adjustments as defined by the proposed changes to the Act
Determine the real costs of ensuring that all students with disability can access a high-quality education and participate in schooling on the same basis as students without disability.
Ensure that students with disability have access to a broad range of education settings to meet the educational, social, emotional and physical needs of all students.
Ensure that all school sectors have funding certainty to a true 100% of the minimum SRS so that they can plan effectively and are not limited in the support they can provide to students with disability in terms of in-class education support personnel, personalised lesson plans, or vital equipment.
Ensure that staffing allocations genuinely reflect the appropriate staff/student ratios and provide the funding needed for the development of individual learning plans and must provide an adequate allocation of additional teacher resource and/or education support staff hours to support students with disability.

15 Australian Government, Attorney-General’s Department, Disability Discrimination Act 1992 Review Issues Paper, 2025, p. 97

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Jurisdictional differences in enrolment practices

Just as the Issues Paper notes the “varying interpretations of exclusionary discipline between state and territory jurisdictions”16 there are also varying enrolment practices across jurisdictions that have the potential to breach a literal interpretation of Recommendation 7.2 that the “Disability Discrimination Act should ‘make it unlawful for an educational authority to discriminate against a student by suspending or excluding [them] on the grounds of a student’s disability,”17

The variation in the process of enrolment of students with disability in schools varies significantly across jurisdictions. This can create an uneven playing field between states and territories, exacerbating significant resource issues for public schools and potential health and safety risks for leaders, teachers and support staff.

For example, in Victoria, parents have an absolute right to enrol their children in their local mainstream public school regardless of whether schools have been provided with the resources available to meet the needs of that child. While schools can suggest alternative arrangements if they cannot meet the needs of the child, parents can ultimately insist on enrolment. The AEU has received feedback from members that while they recognise and appreciate this right to enrolment, there is potential for risk to the student seeking enrolment, and for other students in schools that are not properly resourced. It can also lead to students with disability being placed in classrooms unequipped to support their needs and can potentially result in teachers being at risk of assault from students whose disabilities can manifest violently.

By contrast, in New South Wales public schools a comprehensive risk assessment is completed when a student with a history of violence is seeking enrolment to determine if the school can meet the needs of the student and the school Principal can then make a recommendation on the basis of that risk assessment that could lead to either the provision of increased resources or a change of setting for the student.

The AEU believes that the New South Wales approach represents good practice and that a risk based approach to enrolments where students have a history of violence against either staff or other students, where either additional resources or an alternative setting is provided based on the identified risk level could be considered for wider adoption.

The professional judgement of teachers, education leaders and other school based professionals should play a significant role in both the enrolment and associated processes, and their professional judgements should not be ignored. They should not be the subject of direction from regional or central officers based on pressure from external sources.18

16 Australian Government, Attorney-General’s Department, Disability Discrimination Act 1992 Review Issues Paper, 2025, p.59 17 Disability Royal Commission, ‘Inclusive education, employment and housing’, Final Report, 2023, Volume 7, Part A, p 170. 18 Queensland Teachers Union, The education of students with a disability, 2019, p1

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Additionally, we have found several examples of good practice in terms of inclusion, particularly in South Australia and again in New South Wales, where special classes and specialist teachers are resourced in units within mainstream schools, an exemplar of the “inclusion in the setting” approach. These units encourage inclusive education and the AEU supports the extension and resourcing of these units to more schools across all states and territories.

It is the AEU’s position that the 2020 revision to the Disability Standards for Education 2005, and the examples of inclusion and enrolment procedures as practiced in New South Wales and South Australia provide a useful operating framework for the way that inclusion could be practiced in schools across the country.

The inherent tension between an under resourced total inclusion model and Workplace Health and Safety

Over the last half century, the understanding of disability issues in Australia has shifted from one of welfare to one of rights, and there have been significant changes in the articulation of rights for persons with disability and the corresponding obligations of service providers. In education, this change has been experienced in the move away from segregation and towards the total inclusion model. This model, when adhered to in schools and classrooms where teachers have not received adequate training and where the necessary support and resources are not available, can lead to significant workplace health and safety risks for teachers and support staff, particularly in relation to managing challenging behaviour.

Students with disability have the same human right to a quality education as all other students and Governments are responsible for providing the funding and resources to ensure the legislated rights of students with disability can be met. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 both seek to provide citizens with essential protections in all aspects of the lives of people with disabilities. However, for education systems there is an inherent tension between the rights set out in the CRPD and the Disability Discrimination Act and the requirement that employers eliminate risks to the health and safety of their workers as far as is reasonably practicable as detailed in the Workplace Health and Safety Act 2011.

It is the responsibility of Governments to ensure that they address this tension and ensure appropriate risk mitigation strategies are implemented in circumstances where the risk to a student seeking enrolment, school staff and other students in a school cannot be properly managed with the resources available to meet the student’s academic, developmental, or welfare needs. The equal importance of ensuring that places of work and education are safe as well as free from discrimination is outlined in the Issues Paper.

“Under state and territory workplace health and safety laws, employers currently already have a duty to prevent risks to the health and safety of workers and others impacted by their work, including managing the risk of exposure to discriminatory conduct. The Disability Discrimination Act also requires equal protection of health

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and safety for people with disability at work. Therefore, similar obligations arise under the Disability Discrimination Act and under occupational health and safety legislation”19

All Departments of Education must establish clear policy and procedures to properly manage any issues that arise, providing support and safety for all involved in incidents. Clear dispute resolution processes must be enacted to avoid direct conflict between parents/students and the educational community.

To meet this dual requirement Governments should require that Departments of Education undertake comprehensive risk assessments when a student with a history of complex and challenging behaviors, including violence and aggression, is seeking enrolment to determine if the school can meet the needs of the student. Student enrolment should be determined on the basis of that risk assessment with either the provision of increased resources or a change of setting for the student. The level of funding needs to be maintained for the entirety of the student’s time at school, not subject to annual reassessment.

In circumstances where governments will not guarantee the above, it is very difficult for schools to provide all protections required by the Disability Royal Commission’s recommendation that the “Disability Discrimination Act should ‘make it unlawful for an educational authority to discriminate against a student by suspending or excluding [them] on the grounds of a student’s disability”. 20

TAFE workers need support to help students with disability thrive

In vocational education, AEU members working at TAFE share similar experiences. TAFE educates a disproportionate number of students with a disability in the sector. In 2024, TAFE enrollments of students with disability were proportionally twice as high as in the private VET sector.21 The same data also shows that the TAFE student cohort has the most representation of students with disability out of all VET provider types.

Just like in public schools, TAFE teachers understand their duty to provide reasonable adjustments, but the current funding arrangements and attitudes of educational institutions have led to unreasonable expectations being placed on teachers.

Data from the AEU’s 2025 State of our TAFE survey found over three quarters of TAFE teachers did not feel they were well supported in supporting students with additional needs, indicating that present issues with implementing adjustment plans are the result of neglected funding for administrative support and support staff, not a lack of teacher knowledge.

Since 2023, when federal support for the Free TAFE program began, more than two-thirds of teachers surveyed noticed a change in the numbers of students with additional needs

19 Australian Government, Attorney-General’s Department, Disability Discrimination Act 1992 Review Issues Paper, 2025, p. 42 20 Disability Royal Commission, ‘Inclusive education, employment and housing’, Final Report, 2023, Volume 7, Part A, p 170. 21 NCVER 2025, Total VET Students and Courses

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enrolling, yet more than half of teachers reported no additional learning and student support services being allocated to meet those needs.22

Commonwealth and state governments have looked to TAFE to create a more productive economy by removing the financial barriers to start studying, but for students with disability, this funding did nothing for the barriers which already existed for them. To deliver reasonable and timely adjustments for these students, governments must commit to delivering wrap-around support services, administrative support, and dedicated support staff on TAFE campuses so that these students can receive the education they deserve.

A positive duty to study at TAFE without discrimination

Currently, people with a disability who are looking to study vocational education face an unfair burden to protect themselves from discrimination. Students with a disability should feel confident that they will be supported in achieving their education. In vocational education however, data from NCVER shows that students with a disability have lower completion rates and lower course satisfaction when compared to their peers23. When selecting where to study, and once studying has begun, the burden is on the student to protect themselves and their rights while they study. The unwieldy bureaucratic process of receiving a reasonable adjustment at some TAFEs was documented in Victorian Parliament’s 2021 review24, and processes like this undoubtedly contribute to the lower completion rates.

The AEU supports the recommendations to remove the ‘inability to comply’ element and amend the reasonableness element, however caution should be exercised to not allow the current problems to continue. The current proposed amendments would all see some form of reasonableness element remain and potentially allow continued legal ableism in education settings, and force students with a disability to continue to shoulder the unfair burden they already carry.

Given the history of dubious, for-profit operators in Australia’s vocational education sector, the AEU remains concerned that the amended legislation will allow some providers to justify their ableism as a reasonable product of their smaller size or financial incapacity.

The AEU believes that there is no reasonable amount of discrimination for a student to endure in receiving an education, and that operators who cannot afford to not discriminate against students with a disability cannot afford to operate at all.

As indicated within the review paper, unlike university students, there is no nation-wide ombudsman for vocational education students. While the National Student Ombudsman was recently established to protect some tertiary education students, vocational students are instead referred to a national helpline which may redirect them to one of many other services.

22 Australian Education Union, 2025 State of Our TAFE Survey, available on request 23 NCVER 2025, Total VET Students and Courses 24 Victorian Parliament Inquiry – Access to TAFE for Learners with Disability, 2021

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The decision to establish the National Student Ombudsman yet exclude vocational students from coverage meant allowing the problems which the NSO aimed to solve to continue for some students. Students with disability in VET are expected to navigate the complex bureaucracy with only a helpline as support. The process to access justice for students remains confusing and complicated and places an unreasonable burden on them to fight for their rights while trying to complete their education.

For vocational education, the establishment of a monitored and enforced positive duty to eliminate disability discrimination should be met with monitoring of the sector to ensure that positive duty is being acted upon. The unfair burden which students with disability currently bear should be worn by the government, and students should have confidence that wherever they study, they will not be a victim of ableism. This is only possible by actively enforcing and monitoring dodgy providers, and by providing the necessary funding and support services for those that are doing the right thing.

Conclusion

The AEU is committed to the right of all students to learn in a high-quality, safe environment and to protecting the health and safety rights of all workers as detailed in the AEU Disability in Public Education Policy 2021:

Teachers, educational leaders and support staff in the public system have a pivotal role in creating and promoting a society where all children, students and young people can flourish, and are essential in promoting social and emotional wellbeing, acting as early detectors of need and implementing effective prevention and intervention strategies. They have the right to be fully supported by Departments of Education and all governments in undertaking their professional work.
All teachers have the right to a safe and supported working environment with access to the teaching and learning resources that will ensure every student is able to reach their full potential.
The teaching profession has a duty of care to all children, students and young people, and they have a right to enact their professional responsibilities with the provision of adequate funding, ongoing professional training and development, and support from specialist staff.
Teachers have the right to work within appropriate staff student ratios which are adjusted for students with disability in all settings and/or where children with additional needs are included in the student cohort. This must be supported by governments.

The AEU asserts that teachers who are impacted in their daily work by the negative effects of experiences such as students with complex behaviours that pose threat, critical incidents and violent behaviours, and the compounding effects of constant exposure to challenging student behaviours, require systemic support and effective crisis response mechanisms facilitated by Departments of Education.

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Governments must ensure that mitigation strategies are implemented to address issues which can lead to significant physical and psychological workplace health and safety risks for leaders, teachers and support staff, particularly in relation to working with students that display challenging behaviors of concern.

The AEU supports the Disability Royal Commission recommendations 4.25, 4.26 and 7.2 as detailed in the Issues Paper as part of our unwavering core belief in quality education for all. However, the Commonwealth and state and territory Departments of Education, teachers, parents and school communities have a shared responsibility to ensure the provision of quality education of all students. This is an important and complex task that has fallen too often on individual school communities and teachers, educational leaders and support staff - whose skills, health and workload are unsustainable in the absence of greater systemic support, safe work environments and substantially increased funding that meets the needs of the students it is intended to help.

The AEU urges the Review to consider how the strengthening of the duty of education providers to provide adjustments as proposed by recommendations 4.25 and 4.26, and the protection against exclusionary discipline and suspension as proposed by recommendation 7.2 can be considered alongside a requirement for governments to provide adequate funding to enable schools to meet these welcome revised requirements.

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