Every school in Australia that have students with a diagnosed disability must comply with the Disability and Discrimination Act (1992) and the Disability Standards in Education (2005). This means that students with a disability must be able to access and participate in education on the same basis as their peers and receive adjustments to access education.
The National Collection of Consistent Data (NCCD) is an annual collection tool used by authorities and governments to gather information about students with a disability and enables them to better understand the needs of students with a disability and how they can be supported at school. It requires schools to document evidence showing that they have made reasonable adjustments to address individual student education needs as a result of the functional impact of a disability. This evidence has to be documented for a minimum of 10 weeks of school education, in the 12 months preceding Census Day.
So what does this mean for schools? Schools and teachers need to be documenting and tracking the adjustments across a range of areas in a way that complies with the NCCD requirements. That is, the adjustments need to be classified according to domain (physical, cognitive, etc) and level or degree of adjustment.
The Student Plans in SEQTA are a powerful and flexible tool which enables schools to document the way they are supporting students with specific needs. These plans are efficiently communicated to staff and enable them to document the adjustments they implement. For example, a physical education teacher is likely to have different accommodations for a student compared to a teacher of humanities. All of these adjustments need to be collected for an overall judgement to be made and supplied in the school’s NCCD report.
Alternatively, schools may choose to create a wellbeing category for staff to record the adjustments they are making for the individual students. Use of categories and sub-categories helps to streamline the processing of this information when preparing the NCCD report. In addition, schools that are using SEQTA Analyse may choose to undertake data analysis of the evidence of individual student adjustments and track their individual progress across all learning areas.
SEQTA provides teachers and schools with the perfect tools to capture and record evidence of individual student adjustments and shifts the process from a single point in time data capture, to a continuous year-long cycle. Thus, ensuring that students with an identified disability are receiving the necessary support to access education.
Would you like to discuss how SEQTA can support the requirements of the Disability and Discrimination Act or Disability Standards in Education? Please feel free to contact us and we’ll find a convenient time to catch up.
