The DECO Role in ACT Schools: What Disability Education Contact Officers Actually Do

When parents start navigating disability support in ACT public schools, the acronym DECO comes up quickly — often without much explanation of what the role actually involves. Some parents assume the DECO is the person to call when things go wrong. Others are told the DECO doesn't exist at their school anymore. Both of these situations are confusing for the same reason: the DECO role is currently in transition.

Here's what you need to know about how this role has worked, how it's changing, and who to go to when you need someone inside the school system with real authority over disability support planning.

What the DECO Role Was Designed to Do

The Disability Education Coordinator (DECO) was historically the primary disability-support contact point within each ACT public school. Typically a member of the school's senior leadership team or a teacher with an aspiring leadership role, the DECO's core function was to build the school's operational capacity to meet its obligations under the Disability Standards for Education 2005 (DSE 2005).

In practical terms, this meant the DECO:

• Acted as the primary case manager for students with complex disability-related needs
• Coordinated Individual Learning Plan (ILP) processes, including chairing or supporting planning meetings
• Liaised between classroom teachers, parents, external allied health providers, and the ACT Education Directorate's central disability support team
• Built staff awareness of legal obligations around reasonable adjustments and the NCCD reporting framework
• Served as the escalation point within the school when classroom-level accommodations were insufficient

The DECO was, in theory, the person within the school who knew the most about disability law, ILP requirements, and the resourcing mechanisms available through the Directorate.

Why the Role Is Changing

The ACT's Inclusive Education: A Disability Inclusion Strategy for ACT Public Schools 2024–2034, and its First Action Plan (2024–2026), represents a significant shift in how the Directorate conceptualizes in-school disability support.

Under the old model, disability expertise was concentrated in a single designated person — the DECO — while the broader teaching workforce maintained variable levels of knowledge and commitment to inclusive practice. This created a bottleneck: the DECO became the expert while other teachers stayed passive, and when the DECO wasn't available (or didn't have the institutional authority to drive change), support broke down.

The new strategy addresses this by rolling out Inclusion Coaches — specialists whose primary role is professional development for teaching staff, not individual case management. Piloted initially in the Tuggeranong region, Inclusion Coaches are tasked with embedding Universal Design for Learning (UDL) across entire school communities. Rather than one expert managing each individual student's file, the goal is to lift the capacity of every teacher to implement proactive, inclusive practice by default.

This transition is ongoing. Not every ACT school has moved fully to the Inclusion Coach model. Some schools retain a person functioning as a DECO, even if the title has changed. Others have distributed the coordination responsibility across multiple senior staff.

What This Means for Parents

When you need to escalate a disability support issue within your child's school, you still need to identify the right person with the authority to make resourcing decisions. The title "DECO" may or may not apply to that person at your school.

The relevant person is whoever serves as:

• The ILP Case Coordinator for your child — required to be a member of the school's staff and named explicitly in the ILP documentation
• The Principal or an executive delegate — who must attend ILP meetings and has authority to authorize staffing and resourcing allocations

Under the ACT ILP Guidelines, the Principal (or their designated delegate) must chair ILP meetings and approve any commitments made in those meetings. The Case Coordinator handles the logistics of ILP implementation and progress tracking.

If you are unsure who holds the DECO function at your school under its current structure, ask directly:

"Who at this school is the designated Case Coordinator for my child's ILP, and who has the authority to approve additional resourcing or supports?"

That question bypasses the title confusion and gets you to the person who can actually act.

When to Involve the DECO or Inclusion Coach

The DECO (or equivalent inclusion-focused staff member) is most useful in specific situations:

When classroom adjustments are not being implemented consistently. If the classroom teacher is aware of ILP requirements but either lacks the knowledge or the support to implement them, this is where a DECO or Inclusion Coach should be stepping in — either by coaching the teacher directly or by escalating to the Principal.

When you need to escalate internally before going to the Directorate. The DECO or equivalent is a middle escalation point between teacher-level conversations and a formal Directorate complaint. Use this pathway first when the classroom teacher is unresponsive but you are not yet ready to lodge a formal complaint.

Before a SCAN assessment. The Student Centred Appraisal of Need (SCAN) process determines centralized resourcing allocations. The school's disability support coordinator plays a key role in how the SCAN documentation is prepared and presented. If you are approaching a SCAN meeting, knowing who this person is and ensuring they have current, accurate information about your child's needs is critical.

When you are requesting access for external NDIS providers. Allowing external allied health therapists to deliver support during school hours requires Principal approval and formal consent for information sharing. The person holding the DECO function typically facilitates this coordination.

When the DECO Role Isn't Enough

The DECO role — whatever form it takes at your child's school — operates within the school's own resources and culture. If the school leadership itself is resistant to meaningful inclusion, the DECO has limited ability to override that.

In that situation, the relevant escalation pathway is:

1. Formal complaint to the ACT Education Directorate (phone: 02 6205 5429)
2. Complaint to the ACT Human Rights Commission under the ACT Discrimination Act 1991
3. Referral to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal (ACAT) if conciliation fails — within 60 days of the Commission closing the matter

For a full walkthrough of how to use each of these pathways, the Australian Capital Territory Disability Support Blueprint covers the complete ACT-specific escalation chain, including what to document and how to prepare a complaint that gets results.

The Practical Takeaway

The DECO label is becoming less consistent across ACT schools, but the functions it represented — case coordination, disability expertise, and internal escalation — still need to exist somewhere. Find out who holds those functions at your child's school, get their name in your child's ILP documentation, and know their contact details before you need them urgently.

The person with the relevant authority is the one named as Case Coordinator in your child's ILP, backed by the Principal. Start there.

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