In classrooms today, an estimated 4% of seven- to 14-year-olds now have a primary diagnosis of autism, while between 6% and 10% of children have ADHD.

Teachers struggle

“You might have a student who might be on the autism spectrum and they find the classroom noisy and they might have headphones, or they might have a specific card that they flash to the teacher that says ‘I want out’ and need a sensory break.

In the same classroom you could have children with attendance issues or other challenging behaviours, she says. “You have got mental health issues. . .

“You will have a whole range of disabilities, formally diagnosed and imputed, and you could have some of those kids that come with IFS [integration funding support] or partial attendance programs.

“It can be confronting. The classroom and the behaviours are becoming more and more challenging and the time that teachers are being given hasn’t changed.”  

Things need to change

Teachers are clearly overwhelmed with the needs of the large number of disabled children, and as usual, the solution is MORE FUNDING, MORE TRAINING.

Julie Phillips, who advocates for families pursuing disability discrimination cases against the Victorian education department, says that in the absence of adequate funding, schools are resorting to crude measures to manage the pressure with suspensions and exclusions used repeatedly against children with a disability. . . .

But the president of the NSW Secondary Principals’ Council says resources are always stretched, and that there is a shortage of school counsellors, student support officers (SSOs) and psychologists. . . .

Advocate Julie Phillips agrees the sector is underfunded – but believes inclusive education in Australia has been “set up to fail” by education departments. . . . 

Linda Graham, director of the Centre for Inclusive Education at Queensland University of Technology, believes there needs to be “a systematic, seismic shift” in the way Australian schools approach inclusive education.  . . .

 “There are a growing number of children who are struggling within the school system due to developmental disabilities. This is not a marginal issue … this is now education, and it is difficult to think of an issue that affects people more on a day to day basis in the education setting than disability.”

“If we are to truly create inclusive classrooms, we have to have everything on the table, from teacher training, all the way through to the basic architecture of buildings.

“There are many children with disabilities who are educated in the same classrooms as their peers that are not receiving an inclusive education because the classrooms, the teachers, the level of support is not set up for that.

 “That is not a fault of any single part of the system. That’s an issue with funding at the top, all the way down to simple architecture at the bottom.”

 More disabled students

 “There are a growing number of children who are struggling within the school system due to developmental disabilities. This is not a marginal issue … this is now education, and it is difficult to think of an issue that affects people more on a day to day basis in the education setting than disability.” . . . 

Where are these kids coming from?

This was a very long article, and naturally one would expect that there would be a lot said about why one in every 25 students, one in every 15 boys is on the autism spectrum and why 25 percent of students have special needs.

Incredibly that issue was covered in exactly ONE SENTENCE:

Experts point to the National Disability Insurance Scheme as a key driver of the growth, along with changes to how schools assess disability for reporting purposes.

I took this to mean that because the support system is there, more children are using it.

Actually it’s probably the reverse. The Disability Insurance Scheme is simply being impacted by MORE DISABLE CHILDREN; the effect is not the cause.

Secondly, Martin falls back on the tired claim that it’s all greater awareness, better diagnosing, which is always the explanation for more and more disabled children.

Martin’s second piece was an explanation for the first.

Why the Guardian is investigating the deep failings in Australia’s school system

Here the Guardian tried to sound like it was doing authentic journalism.

A Guardian investigation has uncovered deep failings in Australia’s education system, which is struggling to cope with the soaring number of children with disabilities.

 There are now almost one million Australian school students classified as having a disability and needing some sort of adjustment to learn – a 40% increase since 2017.

 Across Australia, a staggering one in four now have a disability of some kind.

 Many parents the Guardian spoke to are at breaking point. They feel adrift and desperate as they try to navigate a school system for their child that was designed for a different reality.

 And autism, ADHD are behind all this growth in special education.

Autism and ADHD rates among children in schools are at record highs. In classrooms today, an estimated 4% of seven to 14-year-olds have a primary diagnosis of autism, while between 6% and 10% of children have ADHD.

The Guardian called out the government for not doing enough.

Compounding these challenges is the deeply inequitable school funding arrangements that have characterised Australian school funding for many years – an inequity that is worsening despite the promise of the Gonski reforms. . . .

At a state level, there is a patchwork of funding arrangements with limited transparency, leaving many children with disabilities without the support they need to receive an education.

Australia supports the right to an inclusive education under international law. We have a duty to support students with a disability to be educated in a mainstream school environment.

But we are falling far short of delivering this ideal. As one disability advocate told the Guardian: it is “a broken system, buckling under pressure”.

What Sarah Martin completely failed to do here was to adequately explain why so many Australian children can’t learn normally. She blithely dismissed all the statistics as no real increase at all, just more awareness.

Martin also showed no interest in the continuing increases.

It would serve no purpose to increase teacher training, special needs funding and add more support staff if within the next few years, one in 20 students have autism and then later, one in 15.

What if by 2030, 40 percent of Australia’s students qualify for special education services?

There will never be enough of anything if these increases continue.

The  Guardian, like the press everywhere in the world, totally refuses to address the real problem: never-ending, enormous increases in disabled students flooding their schools, especial those with AUTISM and ADHD.

No one is willing ask why it’s happening.

I have very little hope for Australia.

Anne Dachel is Media Editor for Age of Autism.

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