Currently all state and territory governments and non-government school sectors (Catholic and Independent) have variations in their processes to identify students with disabilities. Therefore all school sectors are collaborating with the Federal Government on a new approach to collecting data to identify students with disabilities. This project is known as the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data (NCCD).

Students included in this data collection are those who are provided with an educational adjustment to access education because of a disability as defined by the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1992. For the purpose of NCCD, the broad disability categories are Physical, Cognitive, Sensory and Social Emotional.   The definition of disability is not restricted to the EAP Verification Categories: Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Intellectual Impairment (II), Physical Impairment (PI), Vision Impairment (VI), Hearing Impairment (HI), Speech Language Impairment (SLI) and Social Educational Disorder (SED).

The implementation of the NCCD will provide Australian schools, education authorities and the community with information about:

• the number of school students receiving educational adjustments because of disability;
• the broad level of reasonable education adjustments provided for students with disabilities to access education;
• each student’s broad category of disability and
• the distribution of ‘Students included in the NCCD’

Further information can be found on the Education Council website:

https://www.education.gov.au/what-nationally-consistent-collection-data-school-students-disability