A very timely article, but with implications beyond those identified by the authors. Alongside the growth of the number of students with identified disabilities has been a concentration of these students into government rather than private schools.

Public schools in NSW generally enroll two-thirds of all students but enroll 80% of students with disabilities.

This distorted enrolment profile is replicated in other areas, e.g. indigenous, low SES etc. It is harder to know, as far as disabilities are concerned, if the divide is widening, but it certainly is in these other areas.

There are a host of reasons why disadvantage is focused in government schools, but the search for solutions cannot ignore the wider (and quite different) frameworks and obligations under which both public and private schools operate.

In other words, a search for solutions must ensure that all schools do the heavy lifting. Many do, many choose not to….that is just one of the ignored aspects of what we strangely call “choice” in schooling

So a school whose benefit is delivering bright kids with high-level uni entrance scores should help wiht the 'heavy lifting' by taking on seriously handicapped people whose main requirement is not education but nursing or training?

Surely there are good reasons NOT to spend resources intended for academic excellence on seriously handicapped people who have SPECIAL and DIFFERENT needs. And in taking on the needs of those people by government funding, its surely better to focus the expenditure where you get more benefit, in institutions that build a strength in that kind of care.