Australian schoolchildren with neurodevelopmental disorders are being “dumped” from the mainstream system, a leading researcher says, as debate grows over whether special schools for students with a disability should be phased out.
The final report of the royal commission into violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with disability, released on Friday, was split on the issue of special schools.
Three commissioners recommended having no students with disabilities in segregated education by 2052, with no new special schools to be built from 2025 onwards. The chair and two commissioners disagreed.
The number of special schools in Australia increased from 414 in 2010 to 520 in 2022, according to the report.
The biggest increase was in Queensland, which went from 60 to 95, and the biggest increase in public segregated schools was in Victoria, which now has 116, including 82 government-funded schools, up from 76 in 2010.
The director of the Centre for Inclusive Education at Queensland University of Technology, Prof Linda Graham, said mainstream education has been “dumping the students that it doesn’t want to deal with”.
“A lot of the students that are being siphoned out to the segregated system now, are ones that were always in the mainstream system previously,” she said.
Graham said since the 1960s, there has been an increasing number of children with high-incidence disabilities such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or moderate learning disabilities who would otherwise be taught in mainstream schools.
She said a system that centred around competitiveness, such as having good Naplan results, meant many children were not getting the education they needed.
The exodus of families from the mainstream system was being driven by a desire to find supportive environments for their children, but doing so could affect their livelihoods in the future, she said.
“The problem is, we don’t have a segregated world,” Graham said.
Research has shown children with disabilities have better life outcomes if they are educated in the mainstream system.
The Children and Young People with Disability Australia chief executive, Skye Kakoschke-Moore, said when a student was educated in a special school, they were more likely to proceed down a path in life where that segregation was amplified as they got older – such as working in low-paying enterprise employment and living in group homes.
“Whereas we know that if a child is educated in a mainstream setting, there are lots of different turning points along the way where they’re able to access the community and mainstream opportunities that you just don’t get when you’re a student in a segregated environment,” Kakoschke-Moore said.
She called for special schools to be grandfathered out, teachers to be given better training and support, and more accountability for schools to show they were meeting the needs of all students.
The royal commission heard from parents whose children were shunted from the mainstream system.
One respondent, Sufjan, now in his late 20s, has autism and epilepsy. After he was physically assaulted, kicked to the ground and verbally abused at school by other students, his parents were told he should be sent to a special school.
“My parents described it at the time as a battle with both of those schools … They were in sort of war just to have me go to my local public high school, where I was gazetted and zoned to go,” Sufjan told the royal commission.
The Australian Association of Special Education did not respond to a request for comment.
Kim Davies, a lecturer in inclusive education at Deakin University, said the debate on whether special schools should be phased out was a “distraction”.
“Politically, special schools are not going away – what government would remove a parent’s right to choose where their child goes to school?” Davies said. “The real focus should be on making all schools safe and inclusive for students with disabilities, regardless of whether they are special or mainstream.”
The education minister, Jason Clare, said the fact the commissioners were split showed how “complex” the issue was.
“We need to make sure that children get the sort of education that they need,” Clare said. “There’s a lot that we do at the moment in providing that support for students in the mainstream system. There’s more that needs to be done there.”
He said a whole-of-government taskforce will work through the 222 recommendations handed down by the commission.
• Additional reporting by Amy Remeikis
