TRANSCRIPT
For the past year, an expert panel has been looking at public schooling in Australia - and their report card is now in.
Jason Clare is the Federal Education Minister.
"The gap between children from wealthy families and children from poor families is getting bigger and bigger, and so is the gap in student outcomes of children from the city and the bush (rural areas). And the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous kids. That gap is getting bigger and bigger, and that gap gets bigger with every year of school. This is what we've got to fix."
The situation is no better for students with a disability.
Corena Haythorpe, the federal president of the Australian Education Union, says schools are struggling to support them.
"We conducted a national survey of over 7,800 public school principals, teachers, and support staff earlier this year. And 87 per cent of principals said that they did not have sufficient resources in particular to meet the needs of students with disability, and 89 per cent said they had to take resources from other areas of their budget to fund the assistance that those children required."
The administrative challenges involved in helping students with a disability complicate the picture.
Teacher Beck Andrews says the paperwork requirements can be onerous.
"For those who might not know, it actually takes a lot of work between teachers and parents and lots of outside parties (people) to get a disability diagnosed and to then treat it. It's sometimes even impossible to have that happen in the year that you have them."
Kristen Desmond is the founder of the Tasmanian Disability Education Reform group.
She says data from the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations shows the impact that a lack of support can have.
"32 per cent of people with disability over 20 have completed their year 12, against 62 per cent who don't have disability. If you go to children who have a more profound or severe disability, you're looking at only 25 per cent of them who have completed year 12."
Advocates say part of the problem for these disadvantaged and disabled students is a lack of funding in public schools.
Penny Allman-Payne, from the Greens, laid out the figures earlier this year in the Senate.
"Public schools are now under-funded by $6.6 billion a year. And yet since the original Gonski review, government funding to private schools has increased at double the rate to that of public schools."
But Kristen Desmond says it's also a cultural issue.
She says the education of disabled students is beset by low expectations and a tendency to segregate them into separate facilities where abuse and neglect can flourish.
"I hear a lot about 'well that's very aspirational of you, Kristen, to want that'. And I think that's where our mistake is. What I don't want to see is an education system that says one cohort of students are entitled to this type of education, but this other cohort of students can't do that, so we're not going to have them at that school."
The states' education ministers are currently working with Jason Clare to finalise the terms of a new agreement for funding public schools - and advocates like Kristen Desmond are hoping disability is part of that conversation.
"What we need to be considering in these negotiations is, are we going to implement the Royal Commission's recommendations around inclusive education? And if we are, what does that look like?"
The funding talks coincide with the separate but relevant review on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and the hope of Government Services Minister Bill Shorten that the states could step in to offer more disability funding and services for students, so that the NDIS is not the so-called only 'ship in the ocean'.
Corena Haythorpe says there's a lot for those discussions to digest and confront.
"The fragmented nature of the current system makes it very difficult for families to navigate, and also places additional pressures on principals and teachers whose job it is to ensure that there's that seamless continuum of support for children with disability in our schools. So we've got a number of unanswered questions about how such a foundational support system would work, what the resource implications would be, and how that would be integrated with the school system."
Nicole Rogerson, from Autism Awareness Australia, says it's unclear how each state and territory might feel about picking up some of the responsibility.
"What we do know is the government have determined that there are too many children in this scheme, and that for some of those children, they would be better supported outside the NDIS. And hence they're going to shift that cost over to the states. But at the moment, we just don't know whether the states are ready to pick up that ball and run with it."
But New South Wales appears ready to explore these questions.
It's announced an upper house parliamentary inquiry that committee chair Abigail Boyd says will guide the government's response to the NDIS review, and the damning findings of the Disability Royal Commission.
