Qld schoolchildren with ADHD, autism ‘wrongfully suspended’

Queensland children with “invisible” disabilities such as ADHD and autism are being suspended or excluded at school for “misinterpreted” behaviours.

Queensland children with “invisible” disabilities like autism and ADHD are being repeatedly suspended or excluded from school for “misinterpreted” behavioural challenges, leading advocacy groups say.

An independent study of state school disciplinary absences handed out between 2016-2020 has painted a bleak picture for students with neurodiverse disabilities.

The joint study, by QUT’s Centre for Inclusive Education and the Queensland Advocacy for Inclusion, highlighted disability as being the common denominator among the students being racking up the most absences.

Centre for Inclusive Education director Linda Graham said students with a disability made up less than 20 per cent of overall enrolments in 2020 but received nearly half of all 1-10 day suspensions.

Queensland state schools have dished out an average of 73,000 short suspensions per year in recent years including to hundreds of Prep-aged children.

Prof Graham said the suspension rates were so high because of repeat suspensions, rather than lots of individual students receiving lots of single suspensions.

Queensland’s most vulnerable children – students with a disability, living in out of home care and who were Indigenous – are eight times the risk of suspension than students not in any of these groups.

However, Prof Graham said while there were strategies in place to deal with students in some of the at risk groups, she said some children would be “under-identified” and misinterpreted”.

“Individual students can belong to all three groups, and the danger is that only one of these strategies will come into operation,” Prof Graham said.

“Children with invisible disabilities like autism, ADHD, developmental language disorder, will suffer from this the most because they remain under-identified and their difficulties in school are often misinterpreted as noncompliance.”

An education department spokeswoman said there were several strategies in place to identify and intervene early for students experiencing many forms of disadvantage.

Professor Linda Graham

“For example, to support students with disability, regional principal advisers for inclusion and

autism work with schools to embed whole school approaches to differentiated teaching and

learning in an inclusive environment,” the spokeswoman said.

“These advisers tailor support to meet the diverse needs of individual students and school communities.”

QAI chief executive Matilda Alexander keeping students out of school had no benefit to the children or the community.

Ms Alexander doubled down on previous calls for a state government commitment to halve the number of students with a disability being suspended or excluded from schools within the next years.

“Suspensions and exclusions don’t work, but providing reasonable adjustments, care and support does,” Ms Alexander said.

A Gold Coast mother of a boy with autism and ADHD said her son had been asked to leave two schools and suspended several times at others.

She said he had missed nearly 12 months schooling in total.

“They are focused solely on his behaviour and fail to ask the ‘why is he doing things’? Instead they react,” she said.

The department spokeswoman said it recognised that engagement in school was essential for all children to achieve their potential.

She said addressing systemic factors contributing to the over-representation of the three groups was part of the department’s new Equity and Excellence strategy.

The spokeswoman said the absences was a priority area for all schools and that it was supported by targeted interagency work to provide co-ordinated support for students who are over-represented.

“This year the department has commenced an $80.6 million, two-year transition to a new

funding model for students with disability,” she said.

“This brings the total funding support for students with disability to almost $1.39 billion in funding for the 2022-23 financial year.

“A range of specialist support staff are also available to work alongside school teams to support students in Queensland state schools.”