A recently released report from the 2016 Nationally Consistent Collection of Data for students with disability found Tasmania had the lowest percentage of students with a disability receiving reasonable adjustments in their education.

According to the report, the number of students with a disability receiving adjustments in Tasmania was 12.3 per cent.

This compared to a national average of 18.1 per cent and was the lowest number recorded in the nation. 

Education Minister Jeremy Rockliff said in 2017, schools continued to receive support teacher funding to improve educational outcomes for students with disability.

“The students with disability 2016-17 budget was $75.99 million in 2016, compared to $71.9 million in 2015,” he said.

But Tasmanian Disability Education Reform Lobby founder Kristen Desmond said families continued to fight for their child’s right to quality education. 

“Students with disability should be receiving reasonable adjustments, not just funded students, but any student should be receiving it,” Ms Desmond said. 

“If we do have the highest level of young people with a disability as a percentage, why do we have the lowest level of students with a disability receiving adjustment?” 

She said it was time for the state government to switch to a needs-based model of funding to ensure all children had access to the help they needed.

“At the end of the day, from my point of view, we’ve got a lot of work to do around kids deserving adjustment,” Ms Desmond said. 

“We actually need to see the way we do things here changed and the elephant in the room is the IQ-based funding – it doesn’t work.

“If you truly want to improve the support provided for students with disability, it has to move to a needs-based system.” 

Mr Rockliff said the state budget would include $6.9 million for speech pathologists, psychologists and social workers in schools.