Our response to the NSW Department of Education’s Interim Disability Inclusion Action Plan 2026–2029
A strong disability & inclusion plan for staff.
Let's make it just as strong for students.
We welcome the Department's new draft disability plan — and the real standard it sets for staff with disability. Our ask is simple and constructive: extend that same standard to students with disability. The plan is still a draft, so there's time to get it right, together.
This is an interim plan — and the Department has said it wants feedback. So now is the time to provide it. Take this to your local MP and advocate for change — and make your own submission to the Department while consultation is open.
Make a submission →Email your submission to correspondence-siwr@det.nsw.edu.au
Let's start with the good news
What the plan gets right
There is a lot to welcome in this plan — and it's worth saying so.
These are real steps forward. Our recommendations are about helping the same care reach students.
The people most affected weren't at the table
The plan was shaped without directly consulting the students and families it affects most — or the peak bodies that represent them, such as Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA) and the NSW Advocate for Children and Young People (ACYP). Reform for neurodivergent students should be co-designed with them, not just for them — and there's still time, because consultation is open now.
Who this is about
A large — and growing — group of students in mainstream classrooms.
Neurodivergent learners — autistic and ADHD students, and those with learning differences — are a large and growing part of this group. (NCCD categories also include intellectual disability and mental-health conditions; Helen's Way focuses on neurodivergent learners whose ability is on par with their peers.)
Here’s the paradox
More support than ever — but it isn’t matching the need.
The number of students getting help for disability keeps climbing. Yet what is being provided is not matching what these students actually need — as the figures below show. If it did, you would expect them to be in class and thriving. Instead, the opposite is happening.
Over the very years support has expanded, the signs of students being poorly served have grown with it:
Even among students with disability who already receive support, 2 in 5 say it still isn’t enough to meet their needs — the clearest sign the problem is the fit of support, not the amount.
The share of students (Years 1–10) attending 90% or more of the time keeps falling — 73.1% in 2019, 61.6% in 2023, and 59.8% in 2024, still far below pre-COVID levels.
NSW home-schooling registrations more than doubled (5,906 → 12,762) from 2019 to 2024 — and the share of home-schoolers with disability rose from about 35% to 54%.
School refusal — increasingly called “school can't” to reflect that students cannot attend, not that they choose not to — is rising, and is most common among neurodivergent students. Autism, ADHD, learning disorders and anxiety are named as the key drivers.
Among autistic students, 97.3% face an educational restriction at school, and 4.4% are unable to attend at all because of their disability.
So the shortfall is not for want of effort. The problem isn't the amount of support — it's whether the way it is delivered actually meets a neurodivergent student's needs. And because no one measures student outcomes by disability, or asks the students and families themselves, there is no understanding of what is failing or how to fix it. That is exactly why this plan needs student voice and outcome measurement, not just more activity.
The path to alignment
Five steps to align support with students’ needs — each already taken for staff
Five times, the plan makes a clear commitment to staff with disability. For students with disability, the equivalent isn't there yet. We're simply asking for the same.
Source: NSW Department of Education, Interim Disability Inclusion Action Plan 2026–2029 (June 2026): staff report p.19; measures p.23; leadership & complaints p.36; student-action timeframes pp.32, 40. Full page references are in the Helen's Way submission.
🎯 A good start on training — let's make it stick
The plan commits to “promote uptake” of professional learning on disability and neurodiversity, and to make a suite of courses available. That's welcome — but promoting and offering training is not the same as changing what happens in classrooms.
Making training available, and encouraging teachers to take it up, is a start — but on its own it rarely sticks. The strongest way to shift practice is training that is sustained and expected, not one-off or voluntary, and given a firm timeframe (the plan currently lists this action as “TBC”).
Australia's national education evidence body found, in a randomised trial, that light-touch, one-off professional learning doesn't meaningfully change classroom practice on its own — sustained training does. (AERO, Sustaining professional learning outcomes, 2025.)
What we're asking the Department to do
Nine ways to make the plan as strong for students as it is for staff.
Consult parents, carers and young people with disability — and the advocacy groups that represent them, such as CYDA and ACYP — alongside staff networks.
Measure student outcomes by disability, publish them, and set a target to improve — as the plan already does for staff.
Design for sensory needs — lighting, noise and heat — alongside ramps and lifts, because these are major barriers for neurodivergent learners.
Build systems that track the supports delivered — and their effectiveness, drawing on both teacher and student/parent input.
Commission a “Breaking Barriers” report for students, as the Department did for staff.
Include student disability outcomes in leadership accountability — with parent and student voice as a measure.
Offer students and families an independent complaints pathway, as the plan already commits to for staff.
Analyse the drivers of supply and demand for specialist supports — so provision can be planned to meet need, and problems addressed early, before they escalate into needing specialist support.
Give the student actions firm deadlines, and make teacher training robust and sustained.
The standard already exists in this plan for staff. Together, let's make sure it reaches students.
Helen's Way advocates for neurodivergent learners in mainstream education settings across Australia whose ability is on par with their peers — students whose barrier is the way support is delivered, not the what. We welcome this plan, and we're ready to help make it as strong for students as it already is for staff. Above all, it should be shaped with neurodivergent students, their families and the bodies that represent them — not just for them. It's still open for consultation — that's the moment.
Making a submission on the draft plan? Send your response to the Department at youbelong@det.nsw.edu.au.