The Tasmanian Disability Education System needs Urgent Reform

The Tasmanian Disability Education Reform Lobby (TDERL) today releases the results of its third annual Teachers View Survey. 423 teachers took part this year and again the results reveal the stark reality for teaches in our education system. The results show that the Tasmanian Disability Education Support System is a system under stress and in need of urgent reform.
TDERL 2017 survey reports that only 2% of teachers surveyed believed that the current disability education system in Tasmania is adequate the same result as reported in 2016.
97% of teachers reported teaching students with disability and 93% of teachers reporting that they were teaching a student with disability that received no additional funding to help the school provide the reasonable adjustments that students with disability that schools are be obliged to provide.
The Tasmanian Government has made a commitment to improve the support provided to students with disability and while we acknowledge that they have committed to do better, the reality is that change is occurring too slowly and the results of this survey make it clear that teachers are not seeing real improvement in the system in their classrooms.
These results clearly show that teachers are very likely to have at least one child with disability in their classroom, the adequacy of the disability education system impacts almost all teachers in almost all classrooms and this is why more needs to be done to reform the disability education system. These reforms will positively impact every classroom if implemented properly.
This survey again gave teachers the rare opportunity to share their views and it is clear from the results that just as parents are frustrated at the lack of support for their child with disability, teachers are frustrated with the lack of support and professional development provided to them when teaching students with disability.
Teachers told us:
“Support personnel are spread too thinly. There is inadequate or no professional development. No time allowed for planning. Planning for students with disability is extra work on top of an already overloaded workload. No time given to work with teacher assistants to implement planning. Classrooms are not physically set up or adequacy resourced for special needs students. Furniture is often not suitable.”
“There are many students disadvantaged by teacher’s not having the correct PL to work with students with disability.”
“I have two boys with autism, a student with dyslexia, a boy with trauma who cannot read and write and a Chinese student who barely speaks English. I receive less than two day’s aide time a week.”
“No people to run and implement plans. I have become efficient at writing individual learning plans but with no help to implement, what’s the point?”
Teachers said some of their biggest challenges were:
“time to differentiate. Lack of specific training, lack of aide support.”
“being able to make sure the curriculum is accessible. Having time to differentiate learning. Actually understanding the disability a student has.”
“not enough in classroom support and easy access to teaching materials.”
“support with learning plans. The role of Support Teacher appears to have changed from someone who assists with their development to someone who just enforces classroom teachers’ completion of the work.”
“having time to plan lessons and aligning it with their I.E.P and the curriculum and making reasonable adjustments to suit the individual student, also getting time with teacher’s assistants to discuss the appropriate way in which we want to teach the students and meet the school expectations.”
When asked what changes needed to be made to the Tasmanian Disability Education Support System they told us:
“greater access to funding for students, greater TA resources, more training for teachers, some recognition of the additional time required to adequately cater for the needs of disabled students.”
“we need more specialised teachers actually supporting in the classroom – assisting with the planning of lessons etc. At present, the “experts” come to an IEP meeting, tell you what to do and disappear. When you are teaching a multitude of students with different abilities and needs, this can be frustrating and confusing as one of piece of advice for one student may not apply to another student.”
“Increased funding and more human resources to give support to the child as well as the classroom teacher. Many children do not meet the criteria to receive funding when they struggle to cope independently.”
“Funding according to need, rather than category. We were told that this was to occur about 3 years ago, with the NCCD, but this has not yet occurred.”
“more face to face support in the classroom. Our school takes the money and then spreads it out to other priorities.”
Kristen Desmond, founder of the Tasmanian Disability Education Reform Lobby said
“TDERL’s 2017 Teachers View Survey shows for the third year that not only do we have dissatisfied parents and carer’s but highly dissatisfied teachers. If this survey shows us one thing its that the frustrations felt by parents over the lack of teacher professional development, lack of communication and lack of resources are the same frustrations felt by many teachers.”
“It was disappointing to see that in this survey when compared to the 2016 survey results there was an 8% increase in teachers who didn’t participate in disability specific professional development in the last 12 months. Professional development is something that teachers and parents believe is critical to improve support for students with disability, this is something that teachers should be accessing more not less.”
“Families and teachers continue to fight everyday for students with disability and their fundamental right to access a quality education. It is about time that students with disability and their schools were properly resourced. The reality is that the IQ based disability funding system in Tasmanian schools is inequitable, inadequate and failing schools and students.” she said.

Download Teachers View Summary …
2017_Teachers_View_Survey_Summary_Results.pdf
Kristen Desmond