New South Wales Department of Education and Training

Victoria Department of Education

South Australia Department of Education, Training and Employment

Education Queensland

Education Department of Western Australia

Division of Education in Tasmania

ACT Department of Education and Community Services

Northern Territory Department of Education

1. States Parties recognize that a mentally or physically disabled child should enjoy a full and decent life, in conditions which ensure dignity, promote self-reliance and facilitate the child's active participation in the community.

3. Recognizing the special needs of a disabled child, assistance extended in accordance with paragraph 2 of the present article shall be provided free of charge, whenever possible, taking into account the financial resources of the parents or others caring for the child, and shall be designed to ensure that the disabled child has effective access to and receives education, training, health care services, rehabilitation services, preparation for employment and recreation opportunities in a manner conducive to the child's achieving the fullest possible social integration and individual development, including his or her cultural and spiritual development.

6. Disabled persons have the right to . education, vocational training and rehabilitation . and other services which will enable them to develop their capabilities and skills to the maximum and will hasten the process of their social integration or reintegration.

1. The mentally retarded person has, to the maximum degree of feasibility, the same rights as other human beings.

2. The mentally retarded person has a right to proper medical care and physical therapy and to such education, training, rehabilitation and guidance as will enable him to develop his ability and maximum potential

6. States should recognize the principle of equal primary, secondary and tertiary educational opportunities for children, youth and adults with disabilities, in integrated settings. They should ensure that the education of persons with disabilities is an integral part of the educational system.

In these days of what is termed efficiency and cost cutting, changing and both traditional and highly mobile populations, small schools are under threat of closure and bus routes are being redefined. Consequently many students still endure long hours on buses to and from school. This is not easy for any child, but most difficult for the student with complex health and or behavioural issues and most difficult for students who struggle for social belonging or who are in particular need of tolerance and special care. Current 'take home' management strategies cause rural families extra-ordinary additional costs if they have to travel long distances to collect a child who has reportedly acted out at school (submission 89, Annette Herbert, Inclusive Education Network, SA).

City dwellers who have a disability have access, although sometimes limited, to specific transport services. This access includes accessible buses, access taxis and some community buses. In rural communities transport can be quite specific barrier, with no provision between the location of a student with disabilities home and the education setting of either the families or the educators recommendation. The best option is often out of reach because of lack of accessible transport (submission 89, Annette Herbert, SA).

Transport can be an issue in terms of the availability of a wheelchair accessible bus for the inclusion of children with disabilities on school outings and field trips (submission 106, WA).

My daughter has a disability and she has a wheelchair. One problem we have is the modification of buses. She is getting too heavy to lift into the car (she is 14 years old). She is also unable to go on school excursions. The Education Department says that it is not their responsibility. Well whose responsibility is it? At Fitzroy Crossing we have only one modified bus and that is used every day for Aged Care. We don't have any modified taxis. I have also been trying to get my daughter into a boarding school in Perth but I have not been able to find one that can cater for her needs (Fitzroy Crossing Community Meeting, WA, 19 May 1999).

Transport has been a huge issue for our family. When my child started Giant Steps I drove him to Deloraine each day for a year with my younger child. Then when my younger child started school it was too hard to continue with the travel for the 2 of them. There is no school bus for her and I could not get to Deloraine. I withdrew my son and put him back at the special school but they could not cope with him. When we wanted to go back to Giant Steps the government told us to get in a car pool. Disability Services does not do transport. It became a pitched battle for us to get him into the only program that had made a difference for him and for us. We put him in respite service for 6 weeks. They soon realised that he was not the kind of kid who could be transported by car pool and they gave us some money. There was no understanding that he has a right to specialist education (Devonport public meeting, Tasmania, 3 November 1999).

In a country town there is no choice where we go to school and no-one is there to advise and support us. We have to "take it or leave it" (Flynn, page 39).

We elected to send our son to a special school as he became so unhappy in an integrated setting. The closest school was 45 miles away. It refused enrolment because our son did not have an intellectual disability. The school where he was forced to move to is 135 miles away. There was no special school near home. My child can now not live at home during the week (Flynn 1997, page 16).

There is a lack of true choice of educational services in rural areas, and although Integration is offered as a choice it is not a valid choice when it is such as we encountered (submission 9, Victoria).

Our son is intellectually able, ambulant, but has no speech as a consequence of cerebral palsy. He has other impairments because of the c.p. as well. He attended local schools in middle and upper primary but the local state high school insisted they could not meet his needs. The special school only 50 miles away refused to enrol him because he did not have an intellectual disability, a requirement for enrolment. As a consequence, in order for him to attend school at all, we had to seek enrolment in Melbourne special settings for which he was eligible. This was very difficult as accommodation is so difficult....More than that we didn't want to send our son away. We ended up having to, and commute him twice a week to Melbourne.' (Patricia Henry, Victoria, submission).

Parents in urban areas have the advantage of being able to select an appropriate school that caters for their particular needs (submission 31).

For families who live out in those isolated places, if their child is not accepted at their local, one-teacher school or the school in town because they have a disability, then the child, more often than not, ends up in residential care or the family shifts; the family sells up and moves to a bigger rural town or city or the child ends up in residential care. My position and the position of the Council is that that is not a choice. It's not an option for schools to be able to lock kids out purely because they have a disability and then the child, as a result of that, ends up in a segregated educational setting and living setting, which often then goes on for the rest of their life because of the limited capacity of their own, they very rarely get out of that. The links between their family and their community are really severed because it can't be initiated from the child very often and because of what happens at home with family and a whole heap of other pressures, very often that is the event for the rest of their lives . So it starts out just as an educational question and ends up a lifelong issue (Megan Sweeney, parent, Sydney Hearing, 22 October 1999).

If children are bypassing a local special school, or there is a special school within a 50 kilometre radius of the home, then the family of a child at Giant Steps will not be eligible for the Assistance for Isolated Children funds. The Giant Steps program is not considered to be a more appropriate school when there are special schools closer by. This means there are no funding subsidies (Devonport Public Meeting, Tasmania, 3 November 1999).

Teachers in independent schools have observed that within their school's student cohort there are more students with special learning needs among the boarders. They believe this pattern may be due to a lack of early intervention during their primary education. Bridging classes are available to these students. This area requires greater investigation and research both at the individual school level and at the school sector level (SAISB submission, page 18).

There is a lack of boarding school space for disabled children (eg. Those afflicted with spina bifida) and a lack of resources for these schools to cope with disabled children. Parents often have no option but to seek placement for their disabled child in an independent school to gain residential facilities and have to seek means to pay the accompanying fees otherwise their child is unable to study at the secondary level (Scotts PGC College, Warwick, Queensland submission, page 5).

More effort should be made to bring equivalent services to remote areas to avoid parents and their disabled students in rural areas being doubly disadvantaged.

I am reminded by a contributor to this submission of a discussion we had a couple of years ago. She said, remember when you asked me to identify some best practices in inclusive schools. The two schools which immediately came to mind were schools which were isolated and where the school communities are strong, innovative and creative. They held an ethos of doing their best for their own (submission 89, Annette Herbert, Inclusive Education Network, SA).

I'm proud of the educational community in Bourke for accepting my daughter into the school system. It has been good, but in some ways I wonder if we have greatly disadvantaged her by making her stay here (Bourke public meeting, NSW, 1 March 1999).

Again, often it comes down to the personal philosophy of people making the decisions themselves, you know, the principals or the district personnel. If they believe that segregated education is the way children with disabilities should be educated, they will promote that line and they will put as many barriers in the way as they can to prevent children entering the regular system. Whereas if you get a principal or district personnel who believe that they should be educated in ordinary classrooms with support, then they'll promote that line (Megan Sweeney, parent, Sydney hearing, 22 October 1999).

Not in all cases, but in many situations, geographical isolation has led to isolation from newer principles and practice, and in many remote areas - as is the same in areas in the metropolitan area - there is a view that children with disabilities shouldn't be in the regular class. They're special people who should be educated in special places anywhere but here. Given the critical nature of the attitude and values of staff, this can be a very big obstacle (Belinda Epstein-Frisch, Institute of Family Advocacy and Leadership Development, Sydney hearing, 22 October 1999).

Education Queensland has got Action Plans with time lines, they've got Ascertainment Procedures, guidelines for Individual Education Plans for Students with Disabilities, they've got support staff, they got specific policy to cover just about everything, except, professional ignorance, attitudes, bias and a pervasive culture of resistance and resentment, that has nothing to do with a persons ethnic or racial origin (submission 220, M A Floyd, Queensland).

If there is inadequacy in schooling for children with disabilities in rural areas I think that we should be trying to address this problem by providing regular schools with the staff/resources they need to be able to provide for children with disabilities. I think in the long run this alternative will not only be cheaper than building and staffing more special schools but will also involve children with disabilities as part of their local community. It would save on travel time, boarding costs and I think it would generally be a lot easier on the children and families (submission 81, Tim Loreman, Faculty of Education, Monash University).

Neglecting teachers in an examination of rural education is like discussing rural health care and forgetting to mention the doctors, or discussing agriculture and forgetting the farmers. Delivery systems are important; support systems can be vital; and national policies often have a major impact. Yet in the final analysis, somebody has to make the system work. In an overwhelmingly majority of cases, that somebody in rural education is the local teacher. Thus, the rural teacher can properly be viewed as the key to the quality of rural education (J Sher cited in Ian Crease 1991, page 65).

Integration of students is a particular problem in rural schools for the student being integrated, the classmates and staff. The lack of support staff at the district level to help with integration matters or special needs students (of all types) makes coping with these students time consuming and in many cases stressful. Students that require a great deal of care whether impaired in some sense or behaviourally difficult increase workload on the staff and will if adequate support is not forthcoming impact on the other students. To have special needs students only placed with aids for portions of their school time is disgraceful. To be told by district staff that appropriate support cannot be sent because you are low on the priority list (as we have) due to lack of support staff in your district gives teaching staff a lack of confidence in the system and disadvantages all students involved.

At present we are 5 weeks into Term 1 and we still have not been given our allocation of support time for our two most needy students. The wheels of bureaucracy must turn faster in this area in future. We have had a situation where a parent has volunteered her services (throughout 98/99 for one day a week to complete simple aid work to release an aid to help supervise her son because allocated time is not enough but very necessary (submission 11, Trangie NSW).

One boy at the school suffered incontinence very badly. The problem started in Pre-school and now he is in Year 6. We have never been able to get proper support for him. We have tried unsuccessfully to get the department to send a person to help him deal with this problem. They don't see him as a priority. As a result of this he has missed a lot if time at school. It is sometimes hard for him to be in the same class as others, especially on a hot day (meeting with teachers, Boulia State School, Queensland, 4 October 1999).

As we need a 'pool' of people working as ISAs at Lajamanu CEC [Community Education Centre] these people are employed casually and therefore receive no holiday pay (12 weeks/year), no sick pay, no recognition of longevity of service and no career structure. We believe that this is an unsatisfactory arrangement as it devalues this staff's work and commitment and in turn suggests that students with disabilities are not truly included when their support staff do not have the same importance attached to their position and the same rights in the workplace as other staff. While we are fortunate at Lajamanu CEC to currently have a full staff in the Special Education Department [the other .5 of the position is for ESL], many other schools have commented on their difficulties in filling and keeping staff in ISA positions due to conditions. This lack of support staff obviously impacts on students with disabilities' outcomes and educational achievements (submission 32, Lajamanu CEC NT).

The services for children with disabilities are very hit and miss and uncoordinated. There is no continuity of service of specialist staff either. These staff do not know what has gone on before. There are also long delays for service. We have a child with a broken hearing aide and it has been broken for ages. He has been without it for most of this year (Billiluna school meeting, WA, 14 May 1999).

There is a teacher of the deaf in Broome. But this person does not have money for travel nor does he have a vehicle. Through lobbying his boss we were able to get money for travel and so he should travel here this year. He has been good in obtaining information about the hearing disabilities of the children here (Billiluna school meeting, WA, 14 May 1999).

Another problem is the mere fact of isolation . A problem is that a special needs child may have needs for additional supports and would really benefit by a special unit in an ordinary school. The problem is one may need five to 10 students with disabilities, according to the Education Queensland policy, to support the education unit, eg, with the special needs teacher or whatever; and indeed there's a big problem in terms of getting one anyway to a remote area. So if you've got a school with maybe 50 students, and two, three or four special needs students, they probably won't get a unit. In fact, they won't get a unit. That's a problem (Larry Laikind, Welfare Rights Centre, Brisbane hearing, 8 October 1999).

With regard particularly to service provision for children on the margin, I wouldn't need to elaborate the difficulty of supporting a child with special learning needs in remote communities; it's very hard, it's very difficult. It's not just a question of money. Even with the money, it's finding the people that have got the skill, have got the interest and the stickability to go out and work with a child who has a physical or a learning disability. Providing materials is, in some ways, the easy part; it's finding the appropriate people and supporting them in the job, and that makes it very difficult (Bill Griffiths, Director of Catholic Education (NT), Darwin hearing 10 May 1999).

There's another issue that's probably worth a mention, and it's a very difficult for one for us, and that is the integration of children with various handicaps. We have difficulty with people who would normally be our political allies over this. We are concerned that students with disabilities are often integrated into mainstream schools without adequate support, or if they receive adequate support initially, that is withdrawn after a period of time, leaving both the teacher and the child disadvantaged. It's most extreme in a one-teacher school . The argument is about what is fair - the department people that I complain to say, "We're very fair; we give everyone their fair share." That is, they cut the pie up and everyone gets their piece. My concept of fairness is that everyone gets what they need, not that everyone gets the same share of what is inadequate

(Wayne Patterson, NSW Teachers' Federation, Sydney hearing, 22 October 1999).

Children with disabilities: quite frankly, I don't know how any school system, let alone our school system, is going to fulfil the obligations laid upon them by the Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act, it would be extraordinarily difficult. If the regulations are introduced in some sort of a building-code mentality, just the sheer financial obligation on schools would be very difficult . Again, how it will be developed over time and how the standards will be actually worked up for educational institutions is a concern, I think (Bill Griffiths, Director of Catholic Education (NT), Darwin hearing, 10 May 1999).

The integration of children with special needs is a feature of Catholic Schools especially St Patrick's where we have 7 Integration students enrolled out of a student population of 220. However, this does present difficulties with greater time and planning demands placed on teachers including attendance at specialised inservicing in Melbourne (2 hour drive) (submission 31, Camperdown Vic).

I did a disability education course by distance but it was very difficult because there are no reference books out here.(Meeting with teacher's aides, Normanton School, Queensland, 5 October 1999)

The distance required to travel to attend training seminars restrains the teachers in these areas. Schools are forced to think twice about sending teachers to some of these seminars or just hope that the subject matter covered won't affect them. Some seminars are only a half day in duration in metropolitan based teachers, but for our country counterparts it becomes a whole day away from their students. This is because they have to travel up to three hours to attend and then get back again (Kerrie Kerschat, Cooinda Family Support Group, Melbourne hearing, 12 November 1999).

I would like to know why integration aides are not qualified. On my own behalf my son's integration aide this year has just walked off the farm and she's got the job. She's got no training. Luckily this time she's a mum, so I guess there's a little bit of 'tender love and care' (Annette Dendle, Melbourne hearing, 12 November 1999).

At the moment the only 'service' available to these children in a year and a half's time (ie when they formally start school) will be a hour or so visit from the special education generalist (not necessarily with any knowledge of Sign) each week. This is an appalling response to the needs of two profoundly disabled children. Yet this is what we are told is 'the price you pay for living in the country' (or the price you pay for being born deaf in the country)(Richard and Cristina V. Taffe, Wodonga, Victoria, submission).

Both parents and the school have attempted on numerous occasions to obtain transport. The response remains the same, there are either no funds available or the facility does not meet the necessary criteria. When questioned about the criteria the response has been that as we are attached to a mainstream school we are not a specialist facility. It is interesting to note that all of the facilities in Melbourne, whether they are integrated or not, have transport available for their students (Traralgon Deaf Facility Victoria, submission).

I think there was almost a third of all the children enrolled at schools of the air that had some sort of difficulty with learning, whether it be a reading problem or a curriculum problem. ADD is another big problem out there and those students from families have no access to any facilities. (Helen Newland, ICPA(WA), Perth hearing, 24 May 1999).

Staffing for students with disabilities studying by distance education needs to be different from that for face to face teaching. Resources are needed for smaller classes and adapting materials. Teacher aide support for toileting or scribing is inappropriate in a remote community where there is no person to employ and the parent is the unpaid supervisor of the student's work (submission 23, Open Access College SA).

The difficulty is that we feel there are a number of students who are enrolled with us who ought to be entitled to some resource, and they're not counted in that salary because they haven't been assessed - because getting that assessment is a very slow process. We've certainly been having discussions with our local people of how we can speed that process up, I guess. In some cases the support, though, is actually needed at the local level, and for some very remote students that is difficult to provide, clearly. What happens is that those families then choose to move to the metropolitan area often, and that happens in country areas as well as remote areas (Ms Beagley, Open Access College SA, Adelaide hearing, 9 August 1999).

Families of children with disabilities do not often stay in a rural or remote community because the support services they need do not exist. There is a lack of access to Guidance Officers, speech pathologists and respite care (submission 23, Open Access College SA).

We should have received a visit from an education psychologist, but she will not come now because there has been a recent tragedy at Wubin and there have been a lot of suicides so she must go to those places as a priority. This means that the children here will not see the psychologist (Billiluna school meeting, WA, 14 May 1999).

The availability of specialist services is very limited in Port Lincoln. The school does not have access to an occupational therapist even though this service should be available to the children once per week. Support services will not come to places like Port Lincoln for one child because of the cost. This means that the parents must travel to Adelaide for specialist treatment. The costs can be prohibitive (Port Lincoln Special School meeting, SA, 10 August 1999).

For example we currently have the case of our student with Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy who is living in very overcrowded housing with no disability access. We know that this student's condition will deteriorate and in the near future he will need a great deal of support. The family has asked the Special Education teacher to assist them with explaining the student's condition and needs to Community Council staff. While the Special Education teacher has attended one meeting, this needs to be an ongoing process if any results are to be achieved. A .5 Special Education teacher is unable to really commit to this, and without any other disability services in the community, the family is left without any results and the student's well-being is at risk. The fact that there is no full-time Special Education teacher means that quality of service is not as high as it should be, and in fact, full access to the education system is denied to these students (submission 32, Lajamanu CEC NT).

Student Services in the Katherine Region has been understaffed for most of 1998 and to date in 1999. Speech Pathologists, Behavioural Management Specialists and Education Officers work out of the Katherine region, and the Guidance Officers and Occupational Therapists and Physiotherapists out of Darwin. These staff have been advised, due to staff shortages, to 'prioritise town'. What this means is that in the second half of 1998 at Lajamanu CEC we did not receive any speech pathologists or behavioural management services, despite having students with high needs in both these areas (submission 32, Lajamanu CEC NT).

One of the other things, too, is about the really rurally remote families for kids who have very high levels of support needs. They may have fragile medical conditions, they may have a lot of physical support needs. Unless you have really good coordinational models of the service provision between education, community services and health, the child generally will not remain at home or the family will move, because for those young people you need all 3 or it won't work. That's a real problem in the rural areas; medical stuff is just being slashed in New South Wales. A lot of towns can't even get a GP (Megan Sweeney, parent, Sydney hearing, 22 October 1999).

Unless a child lives close to a major regional centre, is of very young school age in New South Wales rural districts, the likelihood of them receiving ongoing speech and language therapy is virtually non-existent. That's certainly different from the situation that exists within metropolitan areas of New South Wales. Clearly, the ramifications that that has for the child's learning and ongoing adjustment and development are significant (Deborah Knight, Director of Dalwood Assessment Centre, Sydney hearing, 22 October 1999).

Smaller schools have difficulty in supplying school counsellors because until the student enrolment gets to a certain level they aren't eligible to have counselling on site. I think in South Australia it's 200 students enrolled to get a primary counsellor (SA Association of State School Organisations, Adelaide hearing, 9 August 1999).

The back-up of school psychologists, the breaking down of that profession - indeed, the intent of this particular Department at the present time to spread these people across numerous schools, particularly in remote schools, remote locations, across maybe five or six different schools, means that a child cannot access this type of person when they need them, so usually what you end up having is a referral list that a teacher puts together and then you're called out of the class and the para-professional, the psych, can see you. This is pathetic in the extreme with regard to a child accessing quality professionals when they're needed (David Kelly, State School Teachers' Union, Perth hearing, 24 May 1999).

Sometimes I see a child in my class and I know he or she has a serious problem - a learning difficulty. But I don't have access to the medical information to support the child. I don't know what I should do to help the child. It's very frustrating.

Access to medical professionals such as ear, nose and throat specialists is very erratic. It depends very much when they are available to visit the community. Their visits tend to be very random. You get a fax a week beforehand telling you they're coming. Then there is very little follow-up afterwards. Sometimes you don't hear from them until 6 or 12 months later. In the meantime you're tearing your hair out wondering what you should do to help the child.

Sometimes when medical professionals visit the community they are heavily booked and it is very hard to get an appointment.

We are usually not able to arrange a medical person to visit the community at a time that suits our needs. Mostly we are at the mercy of their timetable (Meeting with teacher's aides, Normanton School, Queensland, 5 October 1999).

There are some positive programs in Mt Isa that provide support for students with disabilities. 'Bush Children' is a community based health program that provides psychologists and other professional support for students with intellectual disabilities. However, its funding is very limited and it also has restrictive age and eligibility requirements. In addition, it is subject to parental consent and parents are sometimes reluctant to admit that their child has an intellectual problem (Mt Isa public meeting, 7 October 1999).

Basic screening happens but there is no real follow-up with specialists and there is no screening for intellectual disability. Screening is focused on pre-primary and Year 1 primary. They will see the other children if they have time. The follow up for children with Otitis Media is poor. It doesn't show up every time. With the changeover of nursing staff there is no continuity (Billiluna school meeting, WA, 14 May 1999).

The first comment they give you every time is that it's the mother that's got the problem not the child or school. But if you've seen your other children through school, you get to know when something is not quite right (Kununurra public meeting, WA, 17 May 1999).

A student was repeatedly suspended from school for disruptive behaviour by teachers who did not realise he had an intellectual disability and attention deficit disorder. He is now on medication and doing well in his studies, but it took the school a whole year to understand the true nature of his condition. There needs to be better assessment of students. Some students are placed in classes above their true level of ability (Mt Isa public meeting, Qld, 7 October 1999).

Eligibility for intervention services such as speech therapists and guidance officers does not start until Year 2. This means that Year 1 children often miss out, yet their need is just as great (Meeting with teacher's aides, Normanton School, Queensland, 5 October 1999).

So the GP doesn't recognise attention deficit disorder, and the school - there is only one school available - and that's another problem, eg a lack of choice as far as schools - the principal and teacher both say, 'Well there's no problem here, there's no attention deficit disorder, no medical disorder. The problem is that the child is bad and you are bad because you cannot control your bad child'. And that's about all (Larry Laikind, Welfare Rights Centre, Brisbane hearing, 8 October 1999).

One of the processes for funding for students with disability in South Australia is that there needs to be an assessment by a guidance officer before you can indicate whether the student is eligible for the funding or not, and that's a real issue for us with families in very very distant locations and remote locations. So often a student could go several months before they can be assessed and access the funding. Often then it's very difficult to use the funding appropriately. An example is that we recently had a primary student arrive from Victoria to William Creek Station. That student had cerebral palsy and an intellectual disability and, because they were new into our system, they had to be reassessed. The Victorian information wasn't sufficient. That student then was entitled to some SSO hours, but in terms of William Creek and providing an appropriate person, there was nobody in the community that was appropriate. That has happened several times, that kind of scenario (Ms Beagley, Adelaide hearing, 9 August 1999).

Another critical problem relates to the specialist resources. The Department of Education and Training has some specialist resources, but they only are of experts, particularly - for example, there's something called the resource support unit, which is there to assist teachers in dealing with students with challenging behaviour. They provide, I understand, very effective support, training, monitoring, help set up programs, but they're not available outside the metropolitan area, and are critically needed. Or, very occasionally, they might go outside the metropolitan area and do an assessment, but they're not available for ongoing support and consultation. So some people have actually said that coming for an assessment is worse than not coming at all, because you get a sniff of what might have been possible, but without any opportunity to actually implement it in any way (Belinda Epstein-Frisch, Family Advocacy, Sydney hearing, 22 October 1999).

I think with the loss of hearing our kids have difficulty in learning and listening to the sounds in their first language using syllables and also the English vowels. They have problems listening and when they do the Multi Assessment Program I think some of our kids have done well with the test, but some of our kids because of their hearing have not done well in the test (Nguiu community meeting, NT, 11 May 1999)

Quite a number of children have hearing disabilities. We have 6 children who had a referral to the ear specialists out of 40 children. Two of those 6 children have priority one ear operations. We have one child who has no hearing and no speech. He floats between two communities. One child has recently had an ear operation. It might be next year before the ear specialist comes so it might be a long time before these children have an ear operation (Billiluna school meeting, WA, 14 May 1999).

A lot of these classrooms have got evaporative air-coolers which put out a significant amount of background noise. A lot of them have got very hard surfaces, where you get echoing and reverberations around the room. When we did sound studies of the classrooms at Yuendumu we found that in some of the classrooms they were putting up an equivalent sound level to a truck prime mover being parked 10 metres outside the door, and that's what the teacher is trying to project their voice above. So there are really very basic things, very commonsense things that simply haven't been done in the older facilities that have been put out. I think it is starting to be addressed in the newer classrooms that are being put up.

That's just one area and I think in a significant number of cases there's permanent hearing damage to those kids. Mostly it cycles so that at any one time the 40% that have got a hearing impairment will be a different list of names, year to year and even parts of years. So really you have to have strategies that prepare the teaching space to maximise the teacher's chances of dealing with hearing-impaired kids . Really, health and education are very closely interwoven; if you've got bad health, it will have a major effect on the ability to achieve educational outcomes (Peter Toyne, Shadow Minister for Education and Training, NT Legislative Assembly, Darwin hearing, 10 May 1999).

A lot of our kids need amplification in the classrooms and we just haven't got the money. That's just one instance (Beverley Angeles, Indigenous Education Council, Darwin hearing, 10 May 1999).

My daughter has had otitis media since pre-primary. This has had a vast impact on her learning. I have had to struggle with this problem. There is nothing in the classroom to deal with this problem. There are long waiting lists for the specialists to see my daughter and meanwhile her education is suffering. There are many children in remote regions with the same problems and these problems are not being addressed (Fitzroy Crossing community meeting, WA, 19 May 1999).

The problem with otitis media is that the hearing levels are always fluctuating. The hearing might be satisfactory one month and poor the next. It is so difficult to cater for the needs of children with these problems and it is affecting their learning. They do have operations to replace the eardrums, but when they are done before the age of 10 they break down and the kids are back on the waiting list for another operation. This makes the kids and the parents very upset. The children have to go 400 kilometres away and the bus comes back to Fitzroy Crossing at 1.30 in the morning. Isolated Patients Transport Assistance Scheme does provide for a parent to accompany the child to the place of the operation, but this is not always possible when the mother has a new baby (Fitzroy Crossing community meeting, WA, 19 May 1999).

Otitis media has more serious implications for children who have a language background of Kriol and Walmajarri as their first languages. Given that they are required to become proficient in English, some of these children hardly hear any English at all. At the school where I teach, we have only just got road access to Fitzroy Crossing, and we have just got a TV as of 3 weeks ago. Before that, I was the only English speaker in the community. Many of the children have otitis media and their English language education is seriously compromised because of the combination of language factors and the hearing difficulties. Something like 90% of the kids at my school have otitis media.

We have Listen Plus at our school, but regardless of whether the sound is amplified, the sound is still a muffle. If you have eardrum damage, it is like having your fingers in your ears.

"The incidence of otitis media today in Fitzroy is less due to cleaner water and better nutrition and housing and greater access to community health. It is certainly better than it was 10 years ago." (Fitzroy Crossing community meeting, WA, 19 May 1999).

We have, in some communities, 100% of children arriving at school having had otitis media, and would, by then, have lifelong hearing damage, and some will have never heard some of the sounds in the English language, which places them at a disadvantage in terms of being able to read and to spell.

It accounts for, in many cases, absenteeism, behaviour problems, and there's a cluster. I think we need to give much more attention to that; and I can provide evidence of that. We conducted research ourselves and programs on that that clearly showed a staggering improvement by training teachers. But our focus was on teacher aides. We believe - and this comes back to the community theme - that durable programs are those that result in community uptake, and that of course implies some form of leadership. So, we, in our programs, having initially targeted teachers, then focused on teacher aides, and we found our programs to be durable; more than durable, they transferred across communities

(David McSwan, Director, Rural Education Research and Development Centre, School of Education, James Cook University, Brisbane hearing, 8 October 1999).

We have had applications in with the Education Department for a year and a half now, to have our school modified to meet disability standards . but the process is so slow that nothing happens. Just recently we were told that we would get the first part of the grant to get the disability toilet but it is still going to be months before that happens. And there seems to be no special provisions to get this disability access. You just have to apply like everyone else does for improvements to the school, and it is just a matter of luck I suppose, or if the department considers your thing all right they approve it. But there is no actual process which we can go through to get disability access and to get it quickly (Lajamanu community meeting, NT, 13 May 1999).

Our three students with mobility difficulties are forced to walk on uneven, rocky ground and to climb up steps that put them at risk of falling. Our two children in wheelchairs are bumped along this uneven ground. We are particularly concerned for our student with Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy. His deteriorating condition means that he is losing muscle strength, for example in his neck, and we have noted that on rocky ground his head bounces around. We believe that the extreme slowness of the procedure to modify our school creates unnecessary health risks for our students and denies them full access to Lajamanu CEC (submission 32, Lajamanu CEC NT).

Another barrier between student and school is whether or not the school itself is accessible. One student within a region where there was supposedly a range of options for secondary education had to forgo his first choice because all of the high school classrooms were upstairs and there was no lift. His family thought long and hard about whether or not they would, what they termed, make a fuss, but decided to compromise lest they only achieve a high profile reputation as troublemakers within a region where everybody knows everybody (Annette Herbert, Inclusive Education, Adelaide hearing).

We have staircases at our school so we don't have kids with disabilities because they can't get up and down the stairs. We only have a few students with very mild disabilities. There is a special school nearby and that is where the disabled students go (Devonport student meeting, Tasmania, 3 November 1999).

What I want to raise is another aspect of that; and that is that for professionals with disabilities to be able to work in rural areas is almost not possible because of problems of access, for instance, wheelchair access in areas that might otherwise be a professional setting for them. So, few of the schools, for instance, are appropriately equipped. Certainly, the department does equip them if a child comes, but, I mean, it's preventing teachers taking appointments, it's preventing a whole range of other people who might otherwise choose to work in rural areas. The broad point is that provisions for disabled and special needs people are not as good and as accessible in rural as in urban areas (David McSwan, Director, Rural Education Research and Development Centre, School of Education, James Cook University, Brisbane hearing, 8 October 1999).

I did a recent complaint for a principal in education. He was a tetraplegic after a car accident - or partially tetraplegic - and he was out west for a number of years. One of his complaints were dealing with promotion, and the problem was 99% of schools in Queensland could not accommodate his wheelchair. That's a big problem, Queensland high-set schools; it's very much the problem now. I know Education Queensland is rectifying this, but very slowly. Indeed, many of the new schools are accessible but not many of the existing ones; and it's really very difficult to put a ramp in a high set Queenslander (Larry Laikind, Welfare Rights Centre, Brisbane hearing, 8 October 1999).

Last year we had a girl come up in a chair. We needed some work done on the school; we needed some toilets altered, some pathways altered and so on and that was all done without a problem. The only difficulty we did have was that she was scheduled to go in an upstairs classroom, which she couldn't go in, so she and the class had to go into what was traditionally a junior primary area because that was a ground floor area. The kids accepted that pretty well. We did have to construct a wall in the open area because we had the Year 1s and the Year 6s side by side. So the access is good. We've access to the library, pathways round the school, disabled toilet. So the student how has her own personal toilet with a lock that she has a key to, with all of her appropriate things in there (Alan McLaren, Kununurra District High School Principal, Kununurra hearing, WA, 17 May 1999).

The final point being also that the frustration for the parents and for our own staff, I guess, is that the more remote that one becomes in New South Wales, the less immediate access or regularity of visits by special ed and support staff to the children's schools; so the issue of skilled and regular intervention for children - regular to meet the needs of the child - is far less available than is available in larger centres and in urban centres in spite of - I should add - my experience in working in both metropolitan, regional and rural districts is that that's in spite of the extreme commitment that exists within staffing in New South Wales rural schools . The answer is more staffing. I'm not so sure that that's a viable answer. The answer is probably supplementation to services such as our own - I'll put in my own pitch here - where we do have the expertise and the facilities to in fact provide the programming for children. The answer is for more access to in-servicing for those that are working out in the more remote areas and certainly for more professional and peer support and for certainly supplementation and support staff (Deborah Knight, Director of Dalwood Assessment Centre, Sydney hearing, 22 October 1999).

The question about why are children being refused access to schools comes in. It happens in state schools as well as the private sector, but the private sector hasn't got the infrastructure of funding to support. The funding to support a child with a disability in the private sector comes from the Commonwealth unless it's derived from the actual school community out of goodwill or whatever. Any actual funding comes from the Commonwealth. It's very limited, I think the maximum amount you can get from the Commonwealth is about $1,000 a year or $1,200 a year to support a child and then that's it (Megan Sweeney, parent, Sydney hearing, 22 October 1999).

It is believed that the central issue that needs to be considered is one of equity. The government schools seem to have a better funding arrangement which puts them in a position of being able to offer a service which is beyond that of St Joseph's. Such a situation disadvantages those children who wish to have a Catholic Education along with the specialised care required for them to reach their full potential. It also needs to be stated that it was initially very difficult for him to make the transition to the High School and required much support from his own family, St Joseph's and Kununurra District High School staff. So basically we're saying that we want to be able to offer the same services that Kununurra District High School does. We've very happy with what is going at present but it seems as though his attendance is dropping off due to different reasons. If it happens that he is not going to the High School and wishes to return to St Joseph's we want to be in a position to be able to offer him what the High School does, and at the moment we can't get the funding to do that (John Polglase, St Joseph's Catholic School, Kununurra hearing, WA, 17 May 1999).

Kids with moderate to severe disabilities get the sort of support they need, like in aide time or resources to be maintained in an ordinary classroom. But at risk, still, are the children that fall into the mild category, the kids who might have a mild intellectual disability, have behavioural problems, who generally come from low socioeconomic backgrounds - also have social implications of that with the family. That funding is still capped, it's spread thin. There's not a lot of infrastructure and those still are very much at risk in the school system. They usually become enrolled but they are expelled or suspended fairly speedily if they don't toe the line. So those kids are still really at risk (Megan Sweeney, parent, Sydney hearing, 22 October 1999).

Fitzroy Crossing Secondary School has access to a psychological service that provides 3 visits to the school per term for 2 to 3 days at a time. One of the issues for the school is the level to which the child has a disability. The Department has criteria for measuring disability and will only provide support for children who fit these criteria. Part of the problem for school occurs when then children are assessed to have learning difficulties, but they do not fit the Education Department categories. The classroom teacher must provide the support for these children. Classroom teachers develop Individual Education Programs for children not eligible for classroom support (Fitzroy Crossing community meeting, WA, 19 May 1999).

Services for students with learning difficulties and psychological problems are available through the education system for only an extremely limited number of students while many others would benefit greatly from some of this type of support. These services can be accessed privately if parents are able to afford the costs, distances to be travelled involved and are able to recognise that their children require particular types of support (Kimba Area School Council SA, submission 124).

Dyslexia is defined as a 'disorder or malfunction that results in a person learning differently from a person without the disorder or malfunction' (Discrimination Act 1992). Due to their higher than average intelligence, these children can slip through the system with ease . Many teachers in many schools are neither qualified nor professionally aware of these children's needs or even if they are, do not have the time to dedicate to these children. However, when teachers are aware that students have a learning difficulty, DETE psychologists report that the student is 'not bad enough' to allow the school to qualify for extra funding (Booleroo Centre High School SA, submission 150).

In many ways children with autism have the most complex needs, are least understood and require the most intensive resources. Respite care becomes a huge issue too because respite workers don't know what to do and family based care and residential care organisations make decisions that they don't want to care for kids with autism. They find them too difficult. It is actually a secondary level of discriminatory behaviour. In a recreation sense there are very few outlets for children with needs like my son. I keep being told that he is not compatible with the group and I'm talking about groups of children with special needs. There is just nowhere for him to go (Devonport public meeting, Tasmania, 3 November 1999).

Another problem is that, whereas in Brisbane there may be several groups that a person could get for support, depending on the particular impairment, there are both community centres, service providers, small formally-organised groups and non-formally-organised groups, there may be no group in a remote area and there may be, say, one group, depending on the disability, in, maybe, a regional rural area. That seems to be a problem (Larry Laikind, Welfare Rights Centre, Brisbane hearing, 8 October 1999).