Safeguarding medical illness disability under the Disability Discrimination Act | External submission

MISSING SCHOOL

2025 Review of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA)

The Disability Standards for Education (DSE) draw their authority from the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), but the DDA must be modernised for the DSE to work effectively in implementation. MissingSchool’s upcoming submission to the 2025 Review of the DSE makes the case for a persistently overlooked cohort of school students—those with chronic medical illnesses.

In Australia, up to 1.2 million school students with medical and mental illness—often absent from school frequently or for long periods—experience systemic discrimination, harassment, and victimisation through omission: they are not properly recognised, counted in data, or supported.

Because medical illness, in particular, remains under-recognised as a disability under the DSE, schools and systems often fail to apply the Standards, or misapply the Standards including by deciding which illnesses they acknowledge for adjustments. The DSE has a broad definition of illness, notably it does not require permanency, diagnosis, or visible evidence of illness; imputation is supported.

These students’ exclusion is not an inevitable outcome of illness—it is the product of outdated systems that still define access solely by physical presence. Gatekeeping, through the denial of reasonable adjustments, cuts students off from classrooms, curriculum, peers, and support during unavoidable absence. As a result, many are pushed into unregulated distance education or homeschooling—ironically relying on the very online tools schools refuse to use. This segregation removes them from the protections of the DDA and DSE, undermining access, equity, and quality, and placing child safety at risk.

Together, these make clear that the DDA and DSE are no longer aligned with modern characteristics of illness, learning, or access. The DDA must explicitly recognise that repeated or extended health-related absence is a characteristic of disability needing adjustment measures. The DSE must be applied consistently, free from discriminatory interpretation of any DSE provisions, so no student entitled to its protections is excluded through misinterpretation or omission.

As learning now occurs across physical and digital environments, both instruments must protect students wherever they learn. The following points set out MissingSchool’s key recommendations to ensure the DSE—and the DDA that underpins it—properly safeguard medical illness disability and uphold student access, participation, and protection from discrimination, harassment, and victimisation.

Key points from MissingSchool’s submission to the DSE 2025 Review are summarised below and should be taken into account in the forthcoming revisions to the DDA.

2025 Disability Standards for Education Review — MissingSchool Position

In response to the 2025 Review, MissingSchool highlights the following.

Background: In Australia, students with medical and mental illness are slipping through an equity gap. Medical illness, in particular, remains under-recognised as a DSE-defined disability, and schools/systems often misapply the DSE by deciding which illnesses they will recognise.

Topic 1: Knowing about and using the Standards (effective implementation)

The DSE regulates for equal access to education for students with medical and mental illness (or imputed illness before diagnosis), regulating schools to make reasonable adjustments, including for health-absences.

MISSING SCHOOL

Schools must not decide which illnesses are recognised and should distinguish between the NDIS, which requires permanent disability, and the DSE, which does not. The DSE supports invisible illness and imputation. Differential/discriminatory definitions (NDIS, Thriving Kids, DSE) need alignment.
The Nationally Consistent Collection of Data (NCCD) website confirms the DSE covers students who care for someone with a disability, but this important interpretation is largely unknown, leaving many young carers and siblings overlooked by their schools for support.
A cold is not the same as cancer or chronic anxiety. A new “chronic illness” code within the approved absence category would enable early detection of chronic absence and trigger DSE reasonable adjustments.
An undiagnosed condition is not truancy or bad behaviour. An illness can be “imputed” through the DSE, without formal diagnosis, based on symptoms or circumstances (including repeat absences) for DSE support.
The DSE seeks protection from stigma and exclusion for students living with illness. That is only as strong as a school’s application of the DSE, which is currently systemically lacking (particularly for invisible illness).
The DSE does not limit equality to physical presence, signalling that students who have chronic absence due to illness still have a right to access their schools with assistive devices and to receive ongoing support.
COVID-19 confirms schools’ and technology’s role in continuing education for students homebound in a health crisis (amend B.3.6 NCCD Guidelines to recognise learning from home as an eligible adjustment, enabling assistive videoconferencing technology for classroom and curriculum access, learning alongside peers).
Videoconferencing to classes, and targeted tutoring across home, hospital, and school would provide learning continuity alongside peers, and specialised support, while NCCD tracking would help close Australia’s data gap.

Topic 2: Inclusive decision-making and complaints handling

Families, students, and clinicians must be included in multidisciplinary decision-making to ensure adjustments reflect medical, educational, and wellbeing needs, including before chronic absence affects school access.
Schools need clear guidance to provide ongoing, adaptive adjustments that are portable across all stages of schooling, transitions between years and schools, and other places of care (home, hospital/clinical settings).
Require an education provider to follow included principles when they consult, resolve issues or handle complaints arising in relation to the DSE and a student or prospective student to avoid ambiguity.

Topic 3: Clear responsibilities for assessment authorities and course developers

Families carry the burden of coordination and advocacy, repeatedly justifying with documentation and explaining their child’s medical and mental illness (including absences) across agencies and settings.
Co-designed adjustments — including videoconferencing for class access counted as attendance — must be health-informed, accommodating fluctuating absences, fatigue, symptoms and effects of medication and/or treatment.
Education authorities must make adjustments portable, so they follow students through all settings and situations (learning from home, hospital, exams, training, assessment, placements) and transitions, for continuity and equity.