Pressure builds on schools and teachers

08 October 2024

In short

• Principals and teachers say a lack of resources and funding mean the needs of students with disability at their school are not being met.
• The increasing incidence of disability, combined with a teacher shortage and insufficient funding, creates a perfect storm.

In my first year teaching in a public primary school, I had two students with disability in my class. The second year, just one. Even though I was fresh out of university, it was manageable. I had the time to make sure they felt part of the class, and the work was adjusted to meet their needs.

We applied for and got additional funding to pay for a teacher's aide. If one of the children needed a break from the classroom, they could take it. If they needed help with their work, they got it.

A decade later it couldn’t be more different. At the public school I work at now there are up to eight students with a diagnosed or undiagnosed disability in every class. We have a lot of students with autism, ADHD and mental health issues, which have increased noticeably since the onset of the COVID pandemic.

When you consider our school serves a multicultural community with high levels of disadvantage, you can imagine how diverse and complex our classrooms are.

Every child with disability is unique. It is wonderful, it is eye-opening, and it is a good experience, but it also means they need something different to cater for their needs.

Declining support

Our biggest issue is that, as the number of students with disability has exponentially increased, the
available support has declined.

If we are lucky, we have a counsellor in the school three days a fortnight. All they do is assessments to determine disability and needs. Our children with mental health issues, particularly trauma, need face-to-face counselling sessions but we just don’t have the capacity.

Because we have so many students who aren’t at the level of learning that they should be, the assessments take priority. We have to make sure we are supporting them based on a diagnosis that is accurate, not just by guessing.

Finding a place in a support class for students with disability is nearly impossible. At the last count in my area, the number of approved applications was 10 times higher than the number of vacant positions.

Many students with disability don’t attract individualised funding, and there is such a large percentage of students who need additional support but there isn’t enough funding to go around.

We did have a specialist teacher with expertise in teaching students with disability, who provided advice and support, but she retired and has not been replaced.

Teachers teaching in the support units within mainstream schools who have additional university qualifications, and therefore more knowledge on teaching students with disability, seem to be fewer than they once were.

Not enough teachers

Because of the teacher shortages, we had 10 vacant positions at the start of the year. That means every teacher has to be in class and we can’t run programs such as English as an additional language or dialect, even though more than 95 per cent of students are from
a non-English speaking background.

Teachers do the best they can, but without the right support it is exhausting doing all your programming and planning, all the assessing for the students in your class, along with individualising learning programs and making adjustments to cater for different students' needs – whether it be learning, behaviour or social skills.

You also have to be so conscious of the classroom dynamic. That can shift when one student walks into a class. Relationships can be disrupted and children can trigger one another. It becomes like putting out spot fires at times because one child who may be on the autism spectrum and has sensory needs might be triggered by another student who has externalising behaviours from mental health. That might upset a child with ADHD who has been sitting too long because you are trying to manage the other two children who are annoyed with one another.

Fortunately, at our school we fund an extra class in each year to reduce the class sizes. If there were 30 or 31 kids in the class, it would be utter chaos.

We have a high number of early career teachers and you can just imagine how challenging it is for them. But even those who have been teaching for more than 25 years say every year is the hardest year they have ever had because of the increasing number of children with really complex needs.

As public school teachers we join the profession to make a difference. We set really high standards for ourselves because we are educating the next generation and we don’t want to let kids down. But right now, we are being let down by a lack of resources and so are our students.

This article was originally published in the Australian Educator, Spring 2024