Good news for students with disabilities

Students with disabilities are set to benefit from two positive announcements made by DETE in recent weeks.

In the first announcement, made as part of the Flying Start project, $3 million has been allocated to support the transition of students with disabilities to high school in 2015. An allocation of two hours per week for 15 weeks will be given to each state school and state high school for the purpose of transitioning students with disabilities (SWDs) who are currently in years six and seven to high school.

Schools will be clustered according to their feeder school arrangements and the expectation is that all students with disabilities will be assisted to transition. The cluster’s combined resource will be based at a primary school nominated by the regional director. Any private schools within the cluster will not attract an allocation, but the cluster will be expected to transition any students with disabilities from these schools if they are attending the state high school in the cluster.

As a result of a second announcement, resourcing allocations for students with disabilities will now be based on actual day 8 enrolment figures.

The department is working to ensure a smoother process with regard to the allocation of resources for students with disabilities for the start of 2015. This includes taking a number of data collections via OneSchool in semester 2, placing a greater emphasis on schools completing verifications early and having predicted enrolment data entered. To this end, DETE has also indicated that it has allocated additional resources to assist with the completion of verifications.

The new process is designed to ensure minimal changes on day 8, as a result of the forward planning in 2014. Schools will be advised of their estimated SWD allocation after each census from regional offices. The actual allocation will be provided as soon as possible after day 8 in 2015.

The news is not all good, however. Unfortunately, the department has not acted on the concerns of the QTU and its members with regard to the allocation of resources for students with disabilities in prep.

All prep students with a disability will be allocated a Q1 weighting, meaning that prep students with significantly higher needs will miss out on the resources required to adequately address their needs. The QTU will continue to push for a solution to address this area of concern.

Dan Coxen
Acting Research Officer

Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 119 No 7, 3 October 2014, p6