Students who are behaviourally disordered, emotionally disturbed, have mental health disorders, or intellectual and\/or physical disabilities now constitute a greater proportion of total public school enrolments in the state. The double impact of decreased proportionate funding and increased proportionate enrolment of students with higher support needs means public schools have never been under more pressure to deliver equity and excellence.<\/p>\n
Schools have often criticised the Department of Education and Training and NSW <\/span>Government for: insufficient funding support for students with special needs in all school settings; a lack of special education placements; failing to fund smaller class sizes (mainstream, support units and special schools) to address the special education needs of students; inadequate professional learning opportunities and curriculum support; and inadequate support in areas such as STLA <\/span>(Support Teacher Learning Assistance), school counsellor allocations, physiotherapy, and occupational and speech therapy.<\/p>\n A NSW <\/span>Parliamentary Inquiry has been established to enquire into the provision of education to students with a disability or special needs. Rev the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes, Member of GPSC II<\/span> along with other Committee Members, will inquire into and report on the provision of education to students with a disability or special needs attending primary or secondary schools, with a particular focus on what can be learned from International and Federal approaches, and approaches in other States and Territories.<\/p>\n The terms of reference include:<\/p>\n 1. The nature, level and adequacy of funding for the education of children with a disability. Submissions close tomorrow (this deadline may be extended for a further week) and the first public hearing will be held next month on 22 March 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Students who are behaviourally disordered, emotionally disturbed, have mental health disorders, or intellectual and\/or physical disabilities now constitute a greater proportion of total public school enrolments in the state. The double impact of decreased proportionate funding and increased proportionate enrolment of students with higher support needs means public schools have never been under more pressure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-334121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n2. Best practice approaches in determining the allocation of funding to children with a disability, particularly whether allocation should be focused on a student’s functioning capacity rather than their disability.
\n3. The level and adequacy of current special education places within the education system.
\n4. The adequacy of integrated support services for children with a disability in mainstream settings, such as school classrooms.
\n5. The provision of a suitable curriculum for intellectually disabled and conduct disordered students.
\n6. Student and family access to professional support and services, such as speech therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy and school counsellors.
\n7. The provision of adequate teaching training, both in terms of pre-service and ongoing professional training.<\/p>\n