Aggregate disability statistics suggest the schooling sectors share responsibility, but they can conceal where the most complex support needs actually land – and what public schools are expected to absorb.

Disability statistics are used, reasonably, to suggest that Australian schooling shares a common burden. What they cannot show is who carries it when it becomes heaviest. An aggregate figure treats a child needing occasional reassurance and one requiring constant supervision as interchangeable units. The question is not whether the numbers are accurate, but what their design leaves invisible.

I was recently talking with a deputy principal at a NSW public high school. He was not complaining about having to enrol a child with complex needs. His school does not turn children with complex needs into somebody else’s problem. It serves a community familiar with disadvantage and has long welcomed young people whom other schools might find inconvenient, disruptive or simply too hard.

What I heard in his voice was something different. It was anguish.

The child approaching Year 7 is autistic and has exceptionally high support needs. He currently attends a specialist class in his primary school, where there are fewer students, specialist teachers and additional assistance. Even there, he can presently manage only a half day attendance. He is one of three arriving this intake from specialist settings; the other two are less extreme, but neither can yet sit through a mainstream primary classroom, let alone a mainstream secondary one.

No one familiar with the child believes he is ready to spend a full day in a mainstream secondary classroom. Yet there is no suitable specialist placement available for him in the secondary system. He must therefore be enrolled in the local public high........

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