Record funding for students with a disability

Labor’s continued scaremongering on funding for students with a disability should be seen as nothing more than a political stunt.

Opposition Schools spokesperson, Kate Ellis is either entirely uninformed on disability funding or wilfully frightening some of the most vulnerable families in our community.

Labor failed on school funding, unable to achieve a national agreement or a national funding model. Now they are bizarrely criticising a process they themselves created as Commonwealth, states and territories continue refining the collecting of data to assist with better targeted funding as per the timeframes agreed under Labor.

The Australian Government has more than met its commitment to introduce a funding loading to support students with disability in 2014 and is providing more funding than ever before.

The Commonwealth will provide over $4.8 billion for students with disability over the next four years.

This is approximately: $1.1 billion for 2014-15; $1.2 billion for 2015-16; $1.3 billion for 2016-17; and $1.3 billion for 2017-18.

The Government has also fulfilled its commitment to extend the More Support for Students with Disability with an extra $100 million in the 2014 school year. This funding was designed as a limited term initiative to build the capacity of schools and teachers to better meet the needs of students. This was not designed to be for individual students.

Next year the funding loading for students with disabilities will increase by $100 million to $1.2 billion.