NDIS and ACT Schools: How to Get Your Child's Therapists Through the School Door

Your child has NDIS funding. They have a speech pathologist or occupational therapist who understands them. And the school has told you the therapist can't come in during school hours.

This is one of the most common — and most frustrating — conflicts ACT parents face. It sits at the intersection of two separate systems with different funding rules, different bureaucratic cultures, and sometimes competing institutional interests. Here's how it actually works and what you can do about it.

The Legal Boundary Between NDIS and Schools

The source of the conflict is legislative. The NDIS is explicitly prohibited from funding supports whose primary purpose is educational attainment. Under the NDIS Act, the scheme funds whole-of-life functional capacity — daily living, community participation, independence. It does not fund curriculum access.

Conversely, under the Disability Standards for Education 2005 (DSE 2005) and the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, schools bear the exclusive legal and financial responsibility for providing "reasonable educational adjustments" — supports that help a student access the curriculum.

So the question "who pays for therapy in school?" depends entirely on what the therapy is for:

• Therapy to support curriculum access (e.g., OT for fine motor skills in writing tasks): school responsibility
• Therapy to support daily living and functional capacity (e.g., OT for dressing, eating, self-care): NDIS funded, potentially delivered at school

In practice, this line is blurry. And schools have a financial incentive to push everything onto NDIS.

What Schools Can and Cannot Do

School principals in the ACT hold significant discretion over whether external providers access the school. Both ACT public schools and independent schools governed by AISACT have formal policies on this.

Principals can legitimately:

• Require external NDIS providers to complete site inductions
• Require proof of Working with Vulnerable People (WWVP) clearance
• Require public liability insurance (minimum $20 million)
• Determine whether the therapy session timing disrupts core instruction
• Decide whether they have physical space available for sessions

Principals cannot legitimately:

• Refuse NDIS therapy on the grounds that the school "already provides" an equivalent service, if that equivalent service is not actually being delivered
• Refuse access as a blanket policy without assessing the individual student's situation
• Block access to therapy that supports genuine functional capacity (as distinct from educational attainment) where the school has the physical capacity to accommodate it

The AISACT guidelines for managing NDIS-funded external service providers explicitly acknowledge the school's role in facilitating coordination. The Education Directorate's own policies require schools to develop Information Sharing Agreements to support integration between NDIS therapists and school ILP goals.

The Gray Area: Therapeutic Supports for Classroom Participation

This is where most disputes live. Occupational therapy for emotional regulation, speech pathology for social communication, or physiotherapy for physical participation in class activities — these all sit in a space where both NDIS and the school could argue the other party is responsible.

The key question is: is the support primarily about the student's functional capacity as a person, or is it primarily about their access to a specific educational curriculum?

If your child's OT is working on emotional regulation strategies that apply across all environments (school, home, community), that's primarily functional capacity — NDIS funded, and potentially delivered at school during NDIS-funded hours. If the OT is specifically supporting the student to sit and focus during Year 4 maths, that's curriculum access — school responsibility.

When schools attempt to reject NDIS therapy access by claiming the support is "educational," parents can challenge this by:

• Requesting the school's written assessment of why they've determined the support is educational in nature
• Having the NDIS therapist write a brief statement confirming the functional (non-educational) purpose of the planned therapy
• Citing the AISACT or Directorate policy on external provider coordination, which presupposes that NDIS therapy can and does occur on school grounds

How to Request NDIS Therapist Access at an ACT School

A verbal request is ineffective. Principals deal with operational complexity daily; verbal requests get deprioritised. A formal written request creates an obligation to respond.

Your request letter should:

1. State clearly what you're asking for Specify the therapist's name, their NDIS registration, the type of therapy, the proposed frequency, and whether sessions would occur during or after school hours.

2. Confirm the administrative compliance State that the therapist holds current WWVP clearance and carries $20 million public liability insurance, and that they are willing to complete any required site induction.

3. Frame the purpose correctly Describe the therapy in terms of your child's functional capacity, not curriculum access. Reference the NDIS plan goals the sessions will address.

4. Request an Information Sharing Agreement An ISA allows the therapist and school staff to communicate and align the therapy goals with the child's ILP. Proposing this upfront signals collaborative intent and directly addresses the school's concern about disruption.

5. Reference relevant policy Cite the ACT Education Directorate's external provider policy (for public schools) or AISACT's guidelines (for independent schools). This shows you're working within the system, not around it.

6. Set a response deadline Ask for written confirmation within 10 school days.

When the School Still Says No

If a school denies access and cannot provide a substantiated written reason, consider:

• Requesting a formal SSG meeting to discuss NDIS-school coordination as an agenda item. Make the request in writing so it's documented.
• Engaging your NDIS Support Coordinator if you have one — they can sometimes facilitate inter-agency conversations more effectively.
• Contacting the ACT Education Directorate if the denial appears to conflict with Directorate policy on external providers.
• Raising the access denial as part of a broader ILP or reasonable adjustments complaint, if the school is simultaneously failing to provide internal support.

A school that refuses NDIS therapy access while also failing to provide equivalent internal support through the Allied Health Service (AHS) is in a very difficult position under the DSE 2005. That combination — blocking external help and not providing internal help — is precisely the kind of documented pattern that supports a formal complaint.

The ACT advocacy toolkit at specialedstartguide.com/au/australian-capital-territory/advocacy/ includes a template for requesting external NDIS provider access, framed in the language ACT schools respond to, along with the exact policy references for both public and independent school sectors.

The Information Sharing Agreement

If you get access approved, an Information Sharing Agreement between the NDIS therapist and the school staff formalises how they will communicate and coordinate. Without this, therapy sessions on school grounds can end up siloed — the therapist works with the student in isolation while classroom teachers continue as before.

The ISA should specify:

• What information the therapist will share with teaching staff (e.g., strategies, observations)
• How teacher observations will be communicated back to the therapist
• How both sets of goals (NDIS plan goals and ILP goals) will be aligned
• The frequency of communication between therapist and class teacher or DECO

This coordination is what converts access to the building into meaningful therapeutic impact. Push for it explicitly, because schools will often grant physical access without thinking through the coordination component.

See more Australia homeschool guides →