The abilityNEWS Daily
The Big Story
image courtesy Impact for Kids
Disabled students still face exclusion
Students with disability sometimes face a system that excludes them at the very moment they’re told to plan their lives. Labor’s reforms to higher education are embedding exactly this disadvantage.
Across Australia, Year 10 students are beginning to make decisions about their future. They’re choosing potenial careers; often guided more by hope than knowledge. Schools hum with nervous energy.
But Lara Maia-Pike from QUT’s Centre for Inclusive Education says that for students with disability, the process isn’t just stressful - it’s quietly, systematically exclusionary.
Her research finds that at exactly the moment when choice and aspiration are supposed to take centre stage, many students with disability find doors already closed. The curriculum is constrained, expectations are lowered, and the future shrinks before it even begins.
Of course, this is not just a problem for People with Disability. Maia-Pike says “increased pressure on young people to pursue university pathways [is] reinforced by government higher education policies shaping public perceptions of what success after school looks like”.
This effectively closes doors, particularly to those who remain otherwise marginalised, either by socio-economic grouping or ability status.
Instead of opening doors to new careers, government changes to tertiary education pathways have had the effect of closing off options, rather than opening new ones.
Maia-Pike says this is exactly when “various forms of disadvantage, like living in a remote location or having a disability can overlap, creating additional barriers to achieving educational and career aspirations.
The Briefing
PDA Australia CEO Jeremy Muir
The NDIA is not one person and is not solely impacted by the decisions of one person and one person alone.
by NDIA
PDA CEO Jeremy Muir emphasises that leadership of the NDIA involves many people, not just its chief executive. He also expresses support for CEO Rebecca Falkingham during her cancer treatment, acknowledging the challenges she faces.
NSQHS Standards User Guide for the Health Care of People with Intellectual Disability
by NSQHS
The Commission developed the National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards User guide for the health care of people with intellectual disability in response to significant evidence of poor health outcomes for people with intellectual disability in Australia’s health system.
New research: assessing personal values and implicit bias towards people with disability
by Western Sydney University
In a first-of-its-kind study in Australia, Charles Sturt University researchers found more than three quarters of the Australian sample implicitly stereotype people with disability as incompetent and emotionally cold. The researchers’ discovery of the relationship between personal values and implicit bias offers a different way forward to improve outcomes for people with disability
CYDA’s submission to the Anti-Bullying Rapid Review
by Children and Young People with Disability Australia
Children and Young People with Disability Australia has submitted recommendations to the Anti-Bullying Rapid Review. It urges systemic changes to education policies and practices to better protect young people with disability at school and online.
A new chapter in Melanie’s happily ever after
by Physical Disability Australia
Melanie Hawkes, an advocate and writer living with disability, has won the Jennifer Burbidge Short Story Award in Victoria. Her frank story about seeing a sex worker at 43 sparked global dialogue on disability and intimacy.
Melanie Hawkes
The Wrap
'Challenging for some': Labor warned to ignore disability activists in NDIS overhaul to ensure costs reined in
by Sky News
A stark ministerial brief has warned Labor must ignore disability activists' pleas to slow reforms to the NDIS in order to ensure ballooning costs are reined in quickly. Obtained by The Australian under Freedom of Information, the brief warns NDIS Minister Mark Butler the government will miss its goal of reducing the annual growth of the scheme down to eight per cent from July 2026 should the pace of reforms slow.
NDIS boss Rebecca Falkingham sick with breast cancer, as Scott McNaughton announced as acting CEO
by Daily Telegraph
In response to further questions, an NDIA spokesman said in a statement on Tuesday that Ms Falkingham, who is on more than $800,000 a year, has stage 3 breast cancer and that the NDIA Board has appointed Scott McNaughton as acting CEO.
The Diary
