CYDA's submission to the Senate Inquiry into School disruption

Recommendation 1: Ensure the National School Reform Agreement and Commonwealth funding model supports, incentivises, and holds states and territories accountable to deliver the full inclusion of all students in mainstream school settings and support schools and their staff to facilitate:

• time for planning and engaging directly with students and families
• the development of resources to explore the difference between attendance and engagement and how a focus on providing reasonable adjustments can lift attendance, experience and outcomes
• consistency in use of data and documentation 

Recommendation 2: Develop a National Inclusive Education Act, that is proactive and strengths-based, complemented by a national accreditation framework for inclusive education (along the lines of the National Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education). 

Recommendation 3: Protect the educational rights of children and young people by funding and implementing an independent oversight body to ensure that education providers – in early childhood, school, post-school and adult education settings – are meeting their legal obligations and complaints can be independently investigated, monitored and resolved. 

Recommendation 4: Invest in greater accountability and enforcement of the Disability Standards for Education by:

• introducing compulsory, comprehensive, and ongoing training for educators on inclusion
• impelling education providers to supply a copy of the Standards and explain it in accessible language to every student and their family/caregiver upon enrolment
• improving outcomes reporting and measurement
• ensuring alignment with Australia’s Disability Strategy 

Recommendation 5: Involve and engage children and young people with disability across the education sector to break down barriers to participating in consultative activities. Drive engagement and co-design that informs policy and service development and develop and ultimately implement a National Child and Young Person with Disability Engagement Framework.

Recommendation 6: Fund outcomes monitoring for children and young people with disability to improve the available data and outcomes reporting across education as outlined under the National School Reform Agreement 

Recommendation 7: Invest in further funding for independent disability advocacy for families and young people with disability, to ensure students can have their rights to inclusive education upheld. Where there are specific state and territory-based organisations for children and young people with disability, it is easier to have their issues resolved. In many states and territories there are no specialised services, and CYDA hear numerous reports of the difficulty young people and families have in accessing the support they need. 

Recommendation 8: Instigate a national inquiry into use of disciplinary measures and if the use of those measures comply with international conventions, legislative requirements, and state and territory departmental directives in its use of suspensions, exclusions, and cancelled enrolments and whether its practices lead to the disproportionate use of disciplinary absences (suspensions, exclusions or expulsions) on students with disability. Such an inquiry should also examine comparability of state and territory policies and reporting, data available publicly, rates of use, the approach taken for return to school planning, data collected on measures used for students with disability and educational outcomes.   

Recommendation 9: Prioritise advocacy for change via more detailed feedback to the OECD PISA Governing Board in regard to PISA, supporting changes to the exclusionary nature of the PISA process and reporting, including:

• system level and school level exclusion of students with disability
• lack of reasonable adjustments provided for students to complete the assessment
• lack of data on the performance of students with disability who do complete the assessment

and the need for future refence to students with disability and their outcomes in the OECD Australia’s Country Note. 

Recommendation 10: Instigate more investment in and public transparency across educational outcomes measures that include students with disability and are able to be reported publicly across areas of wellbeing and academic results. This includes greater scrutiny of NAPLAN as an appropriate measure of academic performance.

Case study 1 – Young person Alpha speaking at a CYDA event

Outcomes for students with disability

“….for nothing one thing that was really helpful was when I told my parents that I couldn't do five days it was just too much I never got the time to wind down. My parents at occupational therapists met with the school to introduce decompression dates or I would have the Wednesday off just to rest every second week. I would finish early on the Friday usually at around 12 pm.

It meant a lot that my parents listened to me because I think that it's important for a parent to ask the child what they think.

Unfortunately even though it was obvious that I did better with a four-day week, we had to keep renegotiating it with the school every term because their priority was still increasing my attendance not whether or not I was engaged.

Also told her that it's important for children to attend as much as possible and they aren't very flexible about this because for some kids like me it's a case of quality versus quantity. If I have to attend 25 hours of classes a week I'm overwhelmed and I don't end up getting much benefit out of any of them.

Further I do much better if I attend less classes and can really concentrate on those. As I said earlier decompression days can be a really big help. Having a modified timetable with some downtime is helpful too. For example at primary school I could opt out of PE, Italian and art if I needed to. Mind you my PE teacher was not on board with this and gave me a hard time if I opted out of her class.

Down time to look after your mental health should be encouraged. I can't comment on how to build a sense of belonging because unfortunately I've never felt like I belonged…” 

Case study 2 – Family member Beta, parent of a primary school age child with disability

Inquiry terms of reference (ToR)

I am concerned by the use of the language used by the Committee positioning my child – or any child for that matter – as a “disruption”.  This does not align with research and evidence and a rights-based, trauma informed approach that prioritises the social and emotional learning of all children.

The term “disorderly” is used several times in the ToR to describe the classroom environment.  Meanwhile, “discipline” is offered as the solution to the “problem” as defined in the TOR.  This framing that positions children and young with disability – including those with mental ill-health – is not only insulting but discriminatory. 

The Committee demonstrates a lack of interest in the complexity of the issue.  Ostensibly students who may already face disadvantage are blamed for the conditions which will disadvantage others.

The Committee should:

(a)   Undertake research with students, parents/caregivers and teachers to understand the causes of “school disruption”

(b)   Examine the way the culture of a school may unintentionally contribute to “school disruption” ie. rigid classroom rules that fail to accommodate students with mental ill-health and neurodiverse students 

(c)   Provide staff with the appropriate tools and training to understand and support the varying needs of their student cohort

(d)   Provide adequate staff, supports and services to students and parents/caregivers

Outcomes for students with disability

I want my child to want to go to school and enjoy learning.  Learning is not based solely on academic achievement but a desire to learn and the attainment of social and emotional skills that contribute to the overall wellbeing of children and young people.  The measurement of success should not be based on a few high achieving students but on the success of all students. 

The school environment should be a safe space for my daughter, not one where she is viewed as a “disruption”. 

My daughter was constantly threatened to be kept down a year.  However, each year she was moved to the next year level.  In the majority of her subjects she has received a N/A grade. 

Classroom experiences for students with disability

My daughter has experienced inflexible guidelines that end up causing greater stress.  One such example is times that my daughter must leave the classroom when her anxiety is heightened.  A simple solution would be to allow my daughter to use her headphones and listen to some calming music (as suggested by her psychologist).  My daughter says this helps.  Instead, she is told she must seek permission from the classroom teacher to leave.  Having to speak up in front of her peers to address the classroom teacher is really stressful for my daughter (especially when she is already experiencing heightened anxiety) and has been detrimental to her mental health. 

Classroom management

There are many times my daughter has been punished through, for example, lunchtime detention to complete missed work for missing classes because of her anxiety. 

My daughter was also fortunate to have one teacher who was extremely understanding and supportive.  His priority was to have my daughter attend class and make her feel comfortable and help her connect with her peers.  When grading my daughter’s work, he was very encouraging, pointing out positive aspects of her work but also offering constructive feedback.  I will be forever grateful to this teacher who has helped my daughter and our family immensely. 

Teacher expectations and training

There were many times where teachers’ expectations of my daughter were unrealistic and demonstrated a lack of understanding of her mental ill-health.  I believe that greater training of mental ill-health and disability more broadly is needed. 

School supports and communication

My daughter was made to feel like she was a burden on the school and a “problem” for her teachers, administration and school leadership staff. 

As outlined in the previous example of headphone use above, there were very few (if any) accommodations made for my daughter.  My daughter was told on many occasions in various ways that mental ill-health is no excuse to fall behind with her schoolwork.  There were very few occasions where work was modified, or we received adequate support. 

Our entire family felt like we were battling against the school and their rigidity.  I was asked on at least 3 occasions why I did not home school my daughter. 

I did have semi-regular meetings with the principal and/or assistant principal, classroom teacher – which my daughter attended – regarding my daughter’s progress.  Many of these meetings were arranged by me.  I wanted to use the meetings to develop a plan for my daughter’s progress that was conducive to my daughter’s mental ill-health.  The majority of time spent at these meetings were about how my daughter was behind in her work, was not achieving to the same level as her peers and what this meant for her future. 

These meetings were stressful for my daughter and me.  Because of the damage the meetings had on my daughter’s mental health it was decided by myself, my daughter and her psychologist that she would not attend future meetings.  I am frustrated and angry that – because of the school’s lack of understanding and empathy of my daughter’s mental ill-health – she was excluded from planning meetings about her future.     

As a single income family, I relied on publicly funded services for my daughter.  My daughter had 4-5 sessions with Headspace, however I was told that because of her complex ill-mental health that they we must find another service provider.  My daughter then waited to see a Medicare-funded psychologist.  We have also used some community service providers.  These services have been limited and disjointed.  Very few have been able to work with the school to support my daughter.   

Change needed in classrooms

 The changes I would like to see to classrooms are:

(a)   Greater teacher training (University and professional development) on mental ill-health, neurodiversity, physical disability

(b)   Teachers and school leadership who are willing to listen and accommodate the varying needs of students

(c)   Teachers being pro-active in speaking to students and reaching out to parents/caregivers when they have concerns (rather than being reactive)

(d)   Greater communication between school staff, parents/caregivers and community support organisations

(e)   Changes to the culture of schools so that all classrooms are welcoming of all students

Case study 3 – Family member Gamma, parent of a now young adult with disability 

Inquiry terms of reference

The terms of reference are a simplistic response to a complex issue. The lack of critique of peer reviewed literature linking disruptive classrooms to poor literacy and numeracy is extraordinary. For starters the committee may want to consider the connection between state education departments ignoring the science of reading in favour of a hand-me-down reading framework from the USA and decreasing literacy.

After struggling to fit into the mainstream system through prep and now into year 1, and having no alternative model to pursue, I personally find the ToR of this inquiry to be an insult to families like mine and the education staff working hard to support us. They create an ‘us and them’ mentality which encourages empathy for the children being disadvantaged by “disruption”, which is code for children like mine – variously labelled disruptive, naughty, impulsive, bad, unruly, challenging, problematic. This terminology, like the ToR, create distance from the actual human beings they are being used about, making them easier to judge, chastise, and exclude. Many of these children, like mine, have diagnosed and recognised disabilities, but I suspect the author of these ToR may not be inclined to consider this when it’s much simpler to perpetuate a false binary like victim-perpetrator, good-bad, compliant-non-compliant. Throughout history, many injustices have been committed against people on the wrong, and less powerful side of a false binary. 

I urge the committee to consider the valid critiques of using PISA results to guide education policy[2] & [3], it’s lack of cultural specificity and problems associated with focusing on a narrow curricula of testable concepts,[4] as well as the questionable interpretation of PISA results by governments media and the OECD itself[5]. In fact, in 2015, 100 academics wrote an open letter to the Director of PISA reflecting their serious concerns over the use of PISA results as a guide to education policy. No doubt the committee is aware of this letter.[6]   

Rather than judging all Australian classrooms as “amongst the world’s most disorderly” based on the dubious measure of the responses of a sample of 15-year-olds to five vague statements, the committee’s time would be better spent considering genuine reform of the education system in Australia. For instance, implementation of universal design for learning as a way to achieve inclusion in schools, and evidence from the neuroscience literature that informs our understanding of child development and therefore best practice for inclusion and learning.

It would also be more valuable for the committee to understand the precise ways in which teachers are struggling to create cohesive classrooms that include children with diverse needs and instead of making moral judgements about this, consider the support they require.

Outcomes for students with disability

Fundamentally, the disciplinary climate index is a bolt on survey to the international assessment of reading, mathematics and science. Added in 2015 with a focus on science classes and 2018 with a focus on English classes, it asks a sample of 15-year-old students taking part in PISA to respond to five statements about their experience in the classroom. Here’s how the Australian Council for Educational Research Described the measure for 2018:

“Disciplinary climate was measured by asking students how frequently the following behaviours occurred in their English classes:

• Students don’t listen to what the teacher says.
• There is noise and disorder.
• The teacher has to wait a long time for students to quieten down.
• Students cannot work well.
• Students don’t start working for a long time after the lesson begins.

Students were asked to respond to each of the statements on a four-point scale (every class, most classes, some classes, never or hardly ever)”.[7]

The language used in the statements is value laden and open to broad interpretation depending on the context of the respondent. A 15-year-old in a country known for being relaxed, might have a different interpretation of “a long time” than a 15-year-old in a country known for precision in time keeping. Similarly, cultural interpretations of “don’t listen” vary according to social norms of body language among other things.

This flawed measure of “disciplinary climate” also contradicts other work being done by the OECD to prepare students for the social, economic and environmental reality they are likely to face in 2030 The future of education and skills: Education 2030. “Creative thinking”, “critical thinking”, “growth-mindset”, “problem-solving”, the ability to “think across the boundaries of disciplines”, an “open mindset”, are among the attributes listed by this document as being critical to school graduates facing social, environmental and economic complexity that previous generations have not experienced.

These are the attributes I would like my child to develop at school to support him in the socio-economic environment that he will be graduating into in 2034. And they are the attributes of many disruptors and innovators, who were often judged as poorly disciplined in previous eras of schooling but who went on to generate solutions to current and future problems. This cluster of attributes are nurtured in classrooms that encourage debate and dissent and have the flexibility to see that learning doesn’t always occur in quiet, orderly classrooms where traditional hierarchies set top-down rules that are obediently followed. They are nurtured in inclusive classrooms that do not prioritise the needs of some students, often those perceived as compliant, over those deemed difficult or non-compliant because of their physical or neurobiological characteristics.

In fact, if the OECD and the … ToR applied critical and creative thinking to the “problem” of disorderly classrooms they might consider that it is not necessarily order versus disorder that is being measured by the five statements. Upon further analysis and “thinking across the boundaries of disciplines” they might see that what is actually being measured is the level of tension or friction between old and inflexible structures and the contemporary social and cultural practices, understandings and procedures operating within them.

School as we know it, is no longer fit for purpose, and families like mine are one casualty of old structures designed to support a limited cross section of people, not obliged to include every child in equitable and meaningful ways.

Rather than pointing to social and cultural norms and expectations as the problem that needs changing, it is actually the structures that come together to form what we call “school” that need to be reshaped. We need to apply some of the attributes describe by the OECD to think creatively about how all children can be given access to an education on an equal basis to their peers.

The federal and state governments have updated their policy positions to account for the strong causal links between the experience of wellbeing and academic outcome. For this reason, we should be using measures of wellbeing as a foundational requirement for academic success. For instance, Morton Et. Al. have developed a new measure of safety that could be adapted for use with children.[8]  

As a nation, we should be thinking critically about whether the measures used in PISA are likely to achieve the outcomes that the OECD’s own work argues we need for a successful future.

Classroom experiences for students with disability

I am the parent of a so-called disruptive child, a child who is desperate to do well at school and be like the “good” children in the class that he tells me all about. At home I witness his deep level of shame after he’s acted out in distress at school and this is often made worse by the framework that teachers most often draw on for behaviour management, School Wide Positive Behaviour Support.

This framework for understanding and managing behaviour implies that children choose to behave in the ways that they do and includes rewards and punishments despite a large body of scientific literature that demonstrates that these do not work on the intrinsic motivation of the child to learn for the sake of learning and develop a strong moral compass.

Even more problematic, some children, such as mine, don’t react like a lot of kids do to these mechanisms. Rewards and praise can make him feel so uncomfortable that he can behave in odd and unhelpful ways towards the teachers and punishments make him obsess over taking actions that will lead to him re-living the punishment in an attempt to gain control over the situation the second time around. Being sent to the principal’s office once has led to erratic behaviour that is designed to be sent there again, but this time with a friend so he’s not alone again. It’s not logical to most people, of course, but makes sense in the context of his disability. However, if teachers are not supported by school leadership and skilled wellbeing staff, to understand “challenging” behaviour, especially from a child with a disability, as a sign that the child is distressed, then children like my son are going to be consistently seen as problems to be solved. I’ve spent countless hours writing emails and having meetings with education staff to help them see the way my child presents outwardly in the world in the context of his disability and learning needs and providing coaching and resources on the best ways to relate to him. The emotional and mental labour that goes into this is exhausting. We just felt like we made great leaps of progress in prep, we saw his teacher have a major shift in thinking about him and others like him and it felt like things might be ok for him. Then we had to start the process again when our child got a new teacher for year 1, hoping to get someone who’s experienced enough that we wouldn’t have to start from scratch. This was not the case unfortunately, so once again we’re sending in our OT to deliver the most basic messages about why it’s a worthwhile exercise to include my child in the class.

Alarmist language in wildly inaccurate media headlines only reinforces the narrative around the problem being the “behaviour” of certain students rather than the absolute lack of resourcing and support for teaching staff who are trying to achieve inclusive classrooms with robust learning and wellbeing outcomes. (E.G. Education: Up to half of students in Australian classrooms unable to learn because of ‘noise and disorder’ – Daily Telegraph)

Focusing on the flawed measures of “orderly” classrooms distracts us from the political inadequacy of genuine education reform.

After an altercation with a teacher who approached my child in a way that did not account for his disability, he was secluded in the principal’s office with no staff member present. The wellbeing coordinator of the school set a timer and left him there alone, directing him not to leave until the timer went off. He soon realised the timer was broken but was too scared to leave so spend his entire lunch break sitting alone in the principal’s office. The Disability Royal Commission noted this kind of practice as extremely damaging to children and the Victorian Department of Education lists it as a reportable incident.

Teaching staff and school leadership should be supported with new methods, new paradigms and new environments. Ross Greene’s Collaborative Proactive Solutions method has been peer reviewed and had great success with so called “challenging” students over many decades. It has an entirely different view of students, seeing them as wanting to do well but lacking the skills to do so, and a method that builds the skills that are lagging.

The concept of school itself needs to be re-considered because it is clearly no longer serving large proportions of the population, and it certainly isn’t going to support the innovation required in the future social and economic landscape. I know many families like ours, whose kids just don’t fit at school and who can see a bleak path ahead unless something changes. As we progress on our school journey, coming into contact with teachers and classroom assistants, I can also see that the path for them is equally bleak. As mandates come down from the federal level to support our values for inclusivity, they are not given the resources and support they need to deliver these. I can only imagine how compromised and burnt out they must feel, and I cannot blame them one bit for leaving the profession – but they are not leaving because of the children, even the challenging ones like mine.

The increasing reports of teachers struggling with classroom disruptions should force us to consider that it’s not the students who need to change, but rather the environment in which they are expected to learn. Their world is a very different one to the era in which the key principles that shaped school systems were developed.

Classroom management

Teaching staff do not seem equipped to deliver what is required for my child to be included in the classroom on the same basis as his peers. As a parent, I have had to use my own resources and my child’s NDIS funding to upskill teachers in providing basic educational and behavioural accommodations for my child. If you get an experienced teacher, who has probably had to upskill themselves over the years, then you’re lucky and you have a foundation to build on with them. This year we have a graduate teacher and it really feels like we are providing disability 101 training. It has been extremely stressful for our whole family and my child has had to be brought home from school multiple times after incidents that are entirely preventable if you understand his disability. We are at our local zoned school and our son doesn’t fit any criteria for specialist schools, putting us in a precarious position when it comes to accessing his education.

As well as being secluded, my child has also been informally excluded from school multiple times, which mostly entails me being asked to come and take him home. He has been given detention by his teacher for failing to sit still in class.

Teacher expectations and training

We’ve experienced our child being taught by the aid, someone who is not qualified to teach and certainly not to teach children with complex learning needs. We’ve seen him have less expected of him academically because he learns differently to most of his peers – like accommodations for his learning are too difficult to provide. We, and our OT, have seen movement breaks being given to our child as a way to keep him out of the classroom, presumably to prevent disruption. I don’t want to demonise the teachers doing this, but rather point to the inadequacy of the system that they are teaching in. It’s simply not good enough for children or teachers. 

School supports and communication

I have complained directly to the school that my child’s basic rights under the Program for Students with Disabilities (Victoria) are not being met, including not having an Independent Learning Plan. These are the mechanisms that enable him to participate in his education on an equal basis to his peers and also a requirement under the Disability Standards, and on a practical level, this would have reduced a lot of stress for my child in the classroom and likely made the teacher’s job easier in the long run.

It appears our local school lacks the basic resources or training to maintain these minimum standards, leaving us in a position where we feel our son is at risk of being suspended which would likely severely impact his learning trajectory. Because of this we are considering ways that we can home-school him, but this would mean that myself and my partner would have our economic participation seriously limited.

Change needed in classrooms

According to PISA’s measure the most disciplined classrooms are in South Korea, Kazakhstan and Albania.

Perhaps Australia is planning to move towards the 69-hour work week that is currently being proposed by the South Korean government.[9] 

Or perhaps we could adopt Kazakhstan’s centralised hierarchical system where individual schools and principals have very little autonomy and the objectives, principles and structures of all education, public and private, are determined by national law. And while this socio-political landscape might produce orderly classrooms, students’ performance in reading, maths and science is still well below the OECD average.[10] When considering whether the orderly classrooms of Kazakhstan are producing critical thinkers we could consider the data that demonstrates students from this country had the second lowest scores in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region for assessing the credibility of an information source, for instance. Notably, students with disability are not educated in these schools but rather in separate “correctional schools” or at home (where PISA likely does not include them).

We might ponder Albania, with the third highest disciplinary climate ranking, where the corruption was so problematic it required an anti-corruption strategy to address challenges such as the selection of school principals being subject to political influence.[11]  

The reality is, you cannot cherry pick the most palatable practices from countries such as these, because they are supported by a complex system of social and cultural norms and traditions and legal framework that is completely different and not acceptable in the Australian context. 

If the Senate Committee chooses to follow practices and principles from these countries, then Australia’s commitment to providing trauma informed and inclusive institutional environments cannot be delivered. 

Total population of 15-year-olds

288,195

Total enrolled population of 15-year-olds at grade 7 or above

284,687

Total in national desired target population

284,687

Total school-level exclusions

5,610

Number of participating students across 779 schools

14,273

Total in national desired target population after all school exclusions and before within-school exclusions

279,077

Weighted number of excluded students with functional disability

1,054

Weighted number of excluded students with intellectual disability

7,895

Total weighted number of excluded students with disability

8,949