Submission to the Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance
Scheme Amendment
(Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submitted by: Dr Sandra Elsom, Lecturer, School of Education and Tertiary Access, University of the
Sunshine Coast
A Note from the Submitter I have spent sixteen years working in enabling education. I have worked with students who are navigating university for the first time, students who have faced significant barriers to education, and students living with disability, chronic illness, and complex support needs.
I want to be upfront about the fact that I don’t know which students receive NDIS funding. That is not information students are required to share with me, and I would never ask. What I do see is the difference that support makes.
I have had a student with a vision impairment who was studying during COVID, when everything moved online almost overnight. The digital environment was genuinely difficult for her to navigate. With the right support in place, she was able to keep going. Without it, I have no doubt she would have had to withdraw.
Right now, I have a student with complex medical needs who attends class with a support worker. That worker enables them to manage the physical and logistical demands of a university environment in a way that simply would not be possible otherwise. He participates. He contributes. He is succeeding.
I have had a student whose support dog was part of how she managed her day. I have watched students with high support needs do things that, on paper, might seem beyond reach because the right support was there.
I am making this submission because I am concerned that the proposed amendments to the NDIS will dismantle the supports that make these outcomes possible. The evidence below is drawn from national data and policy analysis. But behind every statistic is a student like the ones I have just described: a person trying to build a future and needing the right conditions to do it.
Executive Summary
The proposed changes in the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 present significant risks to the Australian Government’s stated priorities for the higher education sector. Specifically, the Bill creates a policy misalignment with the Australian Universities Accord (2024), which aims to achieve population parity for students with disability by 2050. By introducing broad funding cuts, shifting individual support responsibilities to universities, and creating prohibitive administrative barriers, the Bill threatens to undermine the success and retention of one of Australia’s most vulnerable student cohorts.
- Conflict with National Participation and Parity Targets The Australian Universities Accord sets a target for 80% of the working-age population to hold a tertiary qualification by 2050. A central pillar of this strategy is achieving “population parity” — ensuring that students with disability are represented in higher education at the same rate as the general population. The proposed Bill directly threatens this goal.
The real-world impact of support cuts Students with disability may rely on “Social, Civic and Community Participation” funds to pay for workers who assist them with class attendance and campus navigation. These are not luxury supports. For many students, they are what make the difference between attending class and not attending at all.
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The planned 50% reduction in these budgets, combined with a 10% cut to capacity- building daily activity funds, will directly reduce the practical assistance that enables students to participate on equal terms.
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Success rates for students with disability are already 7% lower than the national average. Cutting access to funded personal supports at this point will almost certainly widen that gap further.
As I noted above, I have seen this in my own classroom. The students who have the right support in place show up, engage, and succeed. Those without that support can face very different outcomes.
- A Mismatch in Support Responsibility and Funding Models The government is currently transitioning to a Needs-based Funding (NBF) model, introduced in early 2026, which provides per-student loadings to help universities cover the costs of inclusive teaching and learning. The Bill introduces ambiguity about who is actually responsible for what.
Where the gap falls The Bill emphasises that the NDIS should not fund supports “more appropriately” provided by other systems, explicitly naming education. On the surface, this sounds reasonable. In practice, it risks the NDIA concluding that universities should fund individual, personal care supports that have historically been provided by the NDIS.
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Universities are funded and equipped to provide institutional adjustments: accessible software, modified exam arrangements, captioning services, and the like.
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Universities are not funded or equipped to provide the individual personal care or support work that NDIS participants rely on and were never intended to be.
The student I mentioned who attends class with a support worker is a good example. His university can adjust how assessments are delivered, ensure the room is accessible, and provide flexible submission arrangements. His university cannot, and should not be expected to, employ his personal attendant. That is what the NDIS is for.
- Administrative Barriers That Drive Students Out Retention is a key indicator of student success. Students with disability already have consistently lower retention rates (84.2%) compared to their non-equity peers (88.2%). The Bill introduces several new administrative hurdles that are likely to make this worse, not better.
Reassessment thresholds A student will only be able to request a plan reassessment if there is a “significant and ongoing” change in support needs. University study is inherently cyclical; needs fluctuate with semester loads, assessment periods, and placement requirements. This threshold may simply be impossible to meet for students whose needs shift semester by semester rather than permanently.
Wait times that span an entire semester The NDIA response time for reassessments is set to increase to 90 days. A three-month wait could mean a student goes without the support they need for an entire teaching period. The likely outcome, for many, is withdrawal, not because they chose to leave, but because they have no viable way to continue.
Plan suspension during exam periods New rules allow for the suspension of plans if a student is “not contactable” for a period. This penalises students during precisely the moments when they are most stretched: exam periods, mental health crises, periods of medical need. The students who most need stable, uninterrupted support are the ones most likely to be caught by this provision.
- Ignoring the Realities of the University Environment The Accord emphasises a “whole of student” focus, recognising that the university campus is a specific environment with particular barriers. The Bill’s approach moves in the opposite direction.
The problem with “functional capacity” in isolation The Bill’s new definition of “functional capacity” assesses a person’s intrinsic ability while explicitly excluding the impact of their environment. This is a significant problem in the context of higher education, where the environment is everything.
Students with disability rate their sense of belonging and inclusion at university 5.3 percentage points lower than their peers. Belonging is directly linked to retention and completion. A definition of functional capacity that erases environmental context will systematically underestimate the real barriers students face and undercount the support they genuinely need.
Conclusion
I began this submission with the students I have known, because that is where this issue becomes real. Policy documents talk about percentages and parity targets. I think about the student who navigated online learning during a global pandemic with a vision impairment, the student who attends my class every week with a support worker, and the student whose support dog was part of how she got through her day.
What these students share is this: they were able to participate in higher education because the right support was in place. The NDIS Reform Bill, as currently written, threatens to remove or delay or complicate that support in ways that will leave students like them without viable pathways forward.
To ensure the success of the Australian Universities Accord and the effective implementation of needs-based funding, the NDIS Reform Bill must be amended to protect the individual supports that enable higher education access. If it is not, the gap that opens up will not be filled by universities, and students with disability will be the ones who pay the price.
References
ACSES Data Program. (2026). Retention rates in Australian higher education: Analysis of 2024 data (2026 update). Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success.
Australian Universities Accord Review Panel. (2024). Australian Universities Accord: Final report. Australian Government Department of Education.
Department of Education. (2024). Key findings from the 2024 Higher Education Student Statistics. Australian Government.
Productivity Commission. (2025). Building a skilled and adaptable workforce (Inquiry Report No. 110).
Universities Australia. (2022). Higher Education Facts and Figures 2022.