The changes to the Disability Inclusion funding, which will take effect from next year, were revealed to Victorian principals late on Tuesday evening, sparking widespread backlash among educators already struggling to deliver inclusive education in mainstream schools, along with the AEU.
It is “a disgrace and must be reversed immediately”, the union said.
Justin Mullaly, president of the AEU Victoria Branch, said the cuts will affect tens of thousands of students overall cutting hundreds of millions of dollars.
Specific support, he said, is being completely removed from approximately 7000 students – one in every six students currently receiving individual disability inclusion support at a public school.
“The disability inclusion budget was purposefully not increased enough by the Government to keep up with the number of students who require extra support. This is a disgrace,” Mullaly said in a statement.
“I would like to know how the Government proposes the way that the affected students are going to get the support they need to learn with this support pulled out from under them.”
Twenty-nine per cent of Victorian state school students – or more than 193,000 children – have a disability, according to the latest Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on students with disabilities.
Under the new changes, the skills on which a child is assessed for funding support will be cut from 31 to 26.
The Herald Sun said based on this narrowing of scope for assistance, students with disabilities at mainstream schools can expect to lose up to $850 each in funding per term, or $3400 per year, as well as a 2.5 per cent cut to student-level funding rates.
The disability inclusion program supports students with complex learning and wellbeing needs, Mullaly said, and denying them support to succeed during their time at school “is blatantly unfair and it will create more need for government support later in life”.
“There has been no consultation with principals or the Australian Education Union,” the union head said.
“The Government is only now communicating it to schools, six weeks before the end of the year, after school principals have already done considerable planning for 2027.”
Its timeline for implementing the changes is rushed and shows complete disregard for some of our most vulnerable students, Mullaly claimed.
The Government has defended the formula adjustment by noting that the overall number of students receiving disability support has grown substantially since the Disability Inclusion model launched in 2021.
A Government spokeswoman told the Herald Sun that total disability support funding is still growing year-on-year – projected to hit $2.2 billion by 2029 – and that the reforms are intended to "better target" inclusion.
Victorian Principals Association President Andrew Dalgleish told the website school leaders were now scrambling to adjust 2027 budgets and understand the extent of the funding cuts.
Students with disability, just like every other student, deserve full and fair public-school funding – and this is not being delivered when support is being cut, Mullaly claimed.
“The reality of these cuts is that school employees will be required to continue to carry excessive workloads to meet student needs because the government relies on their goodwill and unpaid work as part of their funding model.”
The AEU said it will work to resist these cuts and seek the investment needed to better meet the needs of all students with disability.
Two other major unions have also turned their back on the Carroll Labor Government just a month out from the state election, with one launching attack ads calling Premier Ben Carroll a liar and the other pulling campaign funding, The Guardian newspaper has reported.
The website said the Australian Services Union, which launched the ads, won’t doorknock for Labor in the coming weeks, while the Electrical Trades Union state council has resolved this week not to run a statewide campaign for Labor, “despite spending more than $1.6m supporting the party at the last election”.
