One in Four Students Needs an Adjustment. Are We Actually Preparing Teachers?

By Bronnie Hammond-Vale, Educational Advocate and Consultant

In 2025, 1,125,502 Australian school students received an educational adjustment because of disability. That is 27 per cent of all students-more than one in four children in our classrooms. In 2015, it was 18 per cent. Disability is not a niche issue and inclusive education is not a specialist extra. It is everyday teaching.

So why are families still hearing statements that show such a basic lack of disability understanding?

“She cannot be autistic-she makes eye contact and she is social.”

“He needs to take responsibility for remembering his medication.”

“Everyone is sitting on the floor. They can move to a chair if they get tired.”

“They managed all day at school, so the behaviour at home cannot be caused by school.”

These are not harmless comments. They reveal the assumptions sitting underneath decisions about access, behaviour, adjustments, discipline and whether a child is believed at all.

I am a teacher, an educational advocate, an AuDHD adult and a parent of neurodivergent children. I regularly meet teachers who care deeply and want to do better. I also meet families whose children are paying the price while staff learn disability on the job.

This is not a teacher-bashing exercise. It is a serious question about whether universities, accreditation bodies, education departments and schools are giving teachers the depth of knowledge, practical experience, time and specialist support they need.

What does the data actually tell us?

The most direct Australian study I found is dated, which is a problem in itself. Researchers surveyed 971 early-career teachers in Queensland and Victoria about how well their teacher education had prepared them for the work of teaching. When asked whether their course had prepared them to support the full participation of students with disability, only 42.5 per cent agreed or strongly agreed. More than a third-34.8 per cent-disagreed or strongly disagreed, while 22.7 per cent were neutral. The average score for disability preparedness was 3.06 out of five, compared with 3.61 across all 46 areas of preparation measured. The authors concluded that graduates felt less prepared to teach students with disability than they did for many other parts of their role. Read the Queensland–Victoria study.

The survey was conducted in 2012 with people who graduated in 2010 and 2011. It cannot tell us exactly how a 2026 graduate feels. But I could not find a newer, recurring national measure that publicly reports graduate preparedness for disability and neurodivergence in comparable detail. For a system educating more than one million students receiving adjustments, that absence matters. If governments do not repeatedly measure this knowledge, they cannot confidently claim the gap has closed.

Other evidence suggests it has not. (but if you have a study that is newer please send it my way!!)

The Australian Education Union’s 2024 State of Our Schools survey included more than 15,000 principals, teachers and support staff. Only 36 per cent of teachers said the professional development they had completed gave them the knowledge and skills they needed to teach students with disability. See the AEU survey findings.

A newer survey of 1,024 Australian teachers found that only 45 per cent believed they had adequate knowledge and understanding of how best to support students with ADHD. Read the study abstract.

These are self-reported measures. They measure confidence and perceived knowledge, not demonstrated classroom competence. But that does not make them meaningless. If large numbers of teachers say their preparation or professional learning has not equipped them, we should believe them-and fix the system that sent them into classrooms without enough preparation.

What are Australian teachers required to learn?

Australia does require graduate teachers to know something about disability. Focus Area 1.6 of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers requires graduates to demonstrate broad knowledge of relevant legislation and teaching strategies that support the participation and learning of students with disability. Accredited teaching degrees must show where every Graduate Standard is taught, practised and assessed. See the Graduate Teacher Standards.

That requirement is important-but it is very broad.

Revised national accreditation standards published in 2025 go further. Their core content includes legal obligations and evidence-based approaches for specific disabilities and needs that teachers are likely to encounter, with an emphasis on those common in Australian classrooms. The revised standards enter full implementation in 2027. This is welcome progress. Read the 2025 accreditation standards.

But the national framework does not prescribe a dedicated disability or neurodivergence subject, a minimum number of teaching hours, or a guaranteed placement in a genuinely inclusive classroom. It does not explicitly name autism, ADHD, masking, executive functioning, AAC, sensory processing, cerebral palsy or disability-related fatigue. That does not mean universities teach none of these things. It means the national rules do not guarantee that every graduate receives consistent depth in them.

So, are new teachers coming out actually knowing about neurodivergence? Some undoubtedly are (through own experience, their own children, or even a passion to know more). But the honest answer is that the system cannot yet guarantee every graduate has the practical knowledge to recognise and respond well to the neurodivergence and disability they will encounter in an ordinary classroom.

Professional placements are required to be “as diverse as practicable.” That is not the same as ensuring every future teacher is observed and assessed while planning adjustments with a disabled student, listening to a family, working with allied health professionals and adapting the physical environment.

Australian research involving 60 educators, school leaders, specialists and other stakeholders also identified inadequate tertiary preparation and professional development for early-career teachers. Participants called for more practical training and hands-on placement experience involving students with disability. See the Monash University research summary.

Even the Disability Royal Commission concluded that the workforce needed significant reform. It recommended strengthening initial teacher education, embedding a human-rights approach to disability across the teaching standards, creating an inclusive-education capability framework and delivering continuing professional development based on it. The governments’ 2025 progress report still classified that recommendation as requiring further work. Read Recommendation 7.8 and the progress update.

Knowing a diagnosis is not the same as understanding a student

A teacher does not need to be a paediatrician, psychologist, occupational therapist or physiotherapist. Teachers should not be expected to diagnose children.

They do, however, need enough knowledge to recognise barriers, reject harmful stereotypes, seek the right advice and implement reasonable adjustments. They need to understand that the same diagnosis can affect two students very differently-and that the same student’s capacity can change across environments and over time.

Autism levels are support levels, not a ranking of human beings

An autism diagnosis may include Level 1, 2 or 3. These levels refer broadly to the amount of support a person requires: support, substantial support or very substantial support. They are not a score for intelligence, potential, effort, communication, behaviour or worth. Healthdirect explains the support levels here.

A level alone cannot tell a teacher what fluorescent lighting does to a student’s nervous system, whether spoken language remains available during overwhelm, how much energy they use to interpret a social environment, or what happens after a full day of masking. It cannot replace consultation with the student and family or an individual understanding of function.

Girls are still being missed

We also need to stop teaching neurodivergence as though every child presents like the white, hyperactive boy on an outdated checklist.

Sex and gender patterns are not rules, and no two neurodivergent people are identical. But evidence shows that autism and ADHD can be under-recognised in girls and women. Some children internalise distress, imitate peers, script conversations, develop socially accepted intense interests, achieve academically or remain painfully compliant while masking their needs.

An experimental study of primary school educators found bias against girls and against a female-typical autism presentation. Educators were less likely to recognise autism in girls and were more likely to identify it in boys even when given identical descriptions. Read the Macquarie University research summary.

Research with autistic adolescent girls, their families and school staff has also described masking as exhausting and distressing, with consequences for learning, belonging and mental health. Read the camouflaging study.

A child who looks compliant is not automatically coping. A child who holds everything together until they reach home is not proving that school is fine. Sometimes “fine at school” means the child has spent the entire day sacrificing their nervous system to make adults comfortable.

Executive-function disability cannot be solved by demanding more executive function

I have heard teachers say, “It is the child’s responsibility to remember to take their medication.”

I do not know about you, but I am 36 and I barely remember mine. Expecting a child with ADHD-who may experience difficulties with working memory, task initiation, planning and time awareness-to independently remember a time-sensitive medication is requiring the very capacity their disability affects.

This does not mean every classroom teacher personally administers medication. It means a school needs a safe, documented system based on the student’s actual capacity. Queensland’s current state-school procedure does not treat self-administration as the automatic default. Where approval is required, the principal must consult the student, parent or carer and health team, assess the risks, and be satisfied that the student can self-administer confidently and competently. The procedure also lists failure to administer medication as prescribed-including at the wrong time or not at all-as a medication error. Read the Queensland medication procedure.

“They should just remember” is not a support plan.

Physical access is about energy, positioning and participation-not just ramps

Consider a student with cerebral palsy. A classroom activity may ask everyone to sit on the floor and then move quickly to a chair. To an adult without motor disability, that might look like one tiny transition. For the student, it may require significantly more balance, trunk control, coordination, strength, planning or assistance. It may increase pain or use energy they need for the next lesson.

Research shows that children with cerebral palsy can have a significantly higher energy cost even during routine movement such as walking, and the cost increases with greater functional involvement. See the research on energy cost in children with cerebral palsy.

The correct response is not to decide from across the room that the child “looks capable.” Ask the student. Read their plan. Consult the family, physiotherapist or occupational therapist. Offer a chair from the beginning. Reduce unnecessary transfers. Build in rest without publicly singling the student out. Understand that access includes conserving enough energy to learn.

Because being physically present in the room is not the same as being able to participate.

The cost of shallow understanding

When teachers are not taught enough about disability, differences are easily moralised.

Executive dysfunction becomes laziness.

Sensory overload becomes defiance.

An unreliable speaking voice becomes refusal.

Fatigue becomes lack of resilience.

Masking becomes proof that a family is exaggerating.

Pain becomes avoidance.

A distress response becomes a behaviour problem to punish instead of communication to understand.

The Disability Royal Commission found that Australian schools do not consistently provide safe, quality and inclusive education. It identified failures to provide adjustments and supports, negative attitudes, low expectations and inappropriate exclusionary discipline. It also heard that educators can interpret disability-related distress as misbehaviour and punish the child instead of investigating its cause. Read the Royal Commission’s inclusive-education findings.

That is why this gap is not academic. It changes who is believed, who is included, who is suspended and who starts to believe they are the problem.

What needs to change?

Every Australian initial teacher education program should include substantial, mandatory and assessed learning about disability and neurodivergence. It should not be an optional elective or a few lectures buried inside a broad “diverse learners” unit.

At a minimum, reform should include:

• a human-rights and neuroaffirming foundation, including the Disability Standards for Education and practical application of reasonable adjustments

• explicit teaching about high-prevalence neurodivergence and disability, including autism, ADHD, specific learning disabilities, intellectual disability, communication disability, sensory disability, physical disability, FASD, trauma and chronic health conditions

• executive functioning, sensory processing, communication differences, masking, burnout, fatigue and the many ways distress can be communicated

• sex, gender, culture and other factors that influence whether a child is noticed, believed and supported

• practical experience designing, documenting, implementing and reviewing adjustments with students and families

• placements in schools demonstrating strong inclusive practice, with meaningful exposure to collaboration with teacher aides, inclusion staff and allied health professionals

• education co-designed and delivered with disabled and neurodivergent people, not only about us

• clear competency in student health plans, medication procedures and the boundary between promoting independence and abandoning a child to an inaccessible demand

• funded, paid and recurring professional learning for existing teachers—not a one-off online module completed while answering emails

• mentoring and access to specialist inclusive-education expertise in every region

• regular national reporting on graduate preparedness and demonstrated disability-inclusion knowledge, so improvement can be measured instead of assumed.

Queensland’s commitment to support an additional 200 teachers each year from 2026 to 2028 to undertake qualifications or microcredentials in autism, special education or inclusive education is a useful step. But a limited postgraduate program cannot carry the responsibility for a whole system. Disability capability must be core business for every teacher, every school leader and every teaching degree. Read the Queensland announcement.

Teachers deserve preparation. Students deserve competence.

We are not asking every teacher to become a disability specialist overnight. We are asking them to know enough not to mistake disability for defiance. To understand that equality does not mean giving every child the same chair, the same instruction, the same transition or the same demand. To listen when a child, parent or allied health professional explains that something is difficult-even when it is not difficult for everyone else.

At the time of writing, AITSL is beginning the first formal review of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers since they were adopted, and the existing standards remain in force while that work continues. This is exactly the moment to demand that inclusive education is embedded with specificity, depth and accountability-not left as a broad sentence everyone can technically satisfy. See the AITSL review.

When a child cannot meet a demand, the first question should not be, “Why will they not do it?”

It should be: “What are we asking, what is it costing them, and what can we change?”

That is not lowering standards.

That is teaching.