Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I say to Senator Lambie—through you, Mr President—that I do not have all of those numbers with me in the chamber. I am happy to take that on notice and provide them to her at the earliest opportunity. I can say on the proposal to implement this use of the nationally consistent collection of data on students with a disability that it will capture more students across Australia and therefore provide more support for students with disability across Australia. We have growing funding that will be available to support those students with disability around Australia. It is designed to ensure that the support for students with disability actually targets and meets the needs identified by the classroom teachers and schools in terms of the level of adjustment assistance that an individual student requires. It has been long worked upon and long advocated for by those opposite and others that we should move to funding on the basis of NCCD data, and that indeed is what we seek to do in this model which will capture and support record numbers of students in the future by providing support based on identification by their schools and their classroom teachers.