SA's 'One in Four' Reforms and Inclusive Education Strategy: What Changed for Parents

More than one in four students in South Australian government schools now requires specific adjustments to participate in education on the same basis as their peers. The DfE's response to this demographic reality is the "One in Four" reform agenda — a cluster of policy changes that have significantly reshaped how disability support is structured, funded, and delivered in SA schools.

If you have a child with disability in a South Australian school, these reforms affect you directly. Some changes help. Some create new complexities. And several require families to actively engage with specific new mechanisms to benefit from them.

What "One in Four" Means

The "One in Four" framing comes from the DfE's own data: as of 2024–2025, approximately 25% of students in SA government schools receive educational adjustments due to disability. This is not a crisis framing — it is a recognition that the mainstream classroom is the primary setting for the vast majority of students with disability, and that mainstream teaching practices must be built accordingly.

The reform agenda launched in 2022 and has continued through to 2025–2026 with several distinct components. Understanding each one helps families know what to ask for and what the school should already have in place.

The IESP Supplementary Level Grant Change

The most operationally significant change for most families is the shift in how Supplementary-level IESP funding is delivered.

Under the previous model, schools submitted individual applications for students requiring support at IESP Categories 1 to 3 (the lower-tier needs). This was administratively burdensome and created delays between a student's identified need and funded support.

From 2024, schools automatically receive an annual IESP Supplementary Level Grant based on their prior year's NCCD data for students at the Supplementary level. This means the school no longer applies for individual lower-tier students — it receives block funding based on its overall Supplementary NCCD count, which it then deploys flexibly across the school community.

What this means for families: Individual funding is less traceable. You cannot easily point to a specific funding bucket attached to your child and ask why it isn't being spent on them. The trade-off is that schools have more flexibility and fewer administrative bottlenecks. Whether this flexibility is used well depends on the school's leadership.

If your child is at the Supplementary level and support seems thin, the question to ask is: "Can you show me how the IESP Supplementary Grant is being deployed at this school, and specifically how my child benefits from it?" Schools are not required to give per-student breakdowns, but they should be able to describe the whole-school approaches the grant funds.

Autism Inclusion Teachers in Every Primary School

One of the most concrete changes from the 2024–2025 updates is the deployment of Autism Inclusion Teachers (AITs) in all South Australian primary schools. These are specialist teachers with training in autism-specific pedagogy who are embedded in the school to:

• Build whole-school capacity for supporting autistic students
• Consult with classroom teachers about specific students
• Help develop One Plan adjustments for autistic students
• Provide direct support in some contexts

The AIT role is a school-level resource, not a personal aide for an individual student. Like the Autism SA School Inclusion Program, the AIT builds the capacity of the existing teaching staff rather than replacing it.

To make use of the AIT at your child's school, ask the inclusion coordinator directly: "Has the Autism Inclusion Teacher reviewed my child's One Plan, and what specific input have they provided?" If the AIT has not been involved and your child has autism, this is a gap worth raising.

Tailored Learning: The Replacement for FLO

South Australia previously offered Flexible Learning Options (FLO) as a pathway for students who could not access standard schooling — including students with disability-related school attendance difficulties or students who had been excluded from mainstream settings.

As part of the reform agenda, FLO has been redesigned into Tailored Learning programs. The intent is the same — flexible, personalised educational programming for students who cannot access the standard mainstream curriculum — but the model has been updated to reflect a stronger focus on individual planning and transition back to full-time schooling where possible.

For students with disability who are experiencing "school can't" (the phenomenon where anxiety, sensory overwhelm, or other disability-related barriers make school attendance physically impossible), Tailored Learning may be an appropriate short-term intervention while a more sustainable mainstream support structure is built.

Key questions to ask if Tailored Learning is being proposed:

• What is the specific educational plan during the Tailored Learning period?
• What are the documented goals for return to mainstream or transition to an appropriate alternative setting?
• Who is responsible for ensuring the One Plan remains current during this period?

The 2025 Enrolment Amendments: The Strongest Change

The Education and Children's Services (Inclusive Education) Amendment Act 2025, commencing February 2026, is the most legally significant change in South Australia's inclusive education landscape in years.

Its core provision: no school can refuse to enrol a student on the basis of disability unless it can prove unjustifiable hardship. The threshold for unjustifiable hardship is set deliberately high — the school must consider all relevant circumstances, including its financial capacity and the detriment to the student of non-enrolment.

In addition, principals must now report annually to the Minister on the number of students with disability refused enrolment under the hardship defence, and on what the school is doing to reduce exclusionary discipline for students with disability.

This is a direct legislative response to the Royal Commission's findings on exclusionary education practices. It closes the "soft gatekeeping" loophole that previously allowed schools to informally counsel families away from mainstream enrolment without ever issuing a formal, reviewable refusal.

Revised Suspension, Exclusion, and Expulsion (SEE) Procedures

The "One in Four" reforms also updated SA's Suspension, Exclusion, and Expulsion (SEE) procedures with the explicit goal of providing staff better guidance and reducing the use of these mechanisms for students with disability.

The reforms recognise that many suspensions of students with disability are responses to behaviour that is directly caused by unmet support needs — a disability-related behaviour is not a disciplinary matter, it is a support gap. Schools are now expected to have stronger procedural frameworks before suspending a student with disability, including documentation of what support was in place at the time of the incident.

If your child with disability has received a suspension, request a copy of the suspension documentation and ask specifically:

• What adjustments were in place in the One Plan at the time of the incident?
• Was a functional behaviour assessment conducted?
• What support changes are being made to prevent recurrence?

Under the updated SEE procedures, these are not optional questions — they are part of the re-entry planning process the school is expected to conduct.

What Hasn't Changed: Your Core Legal Entitlements

The "One in Four" reforms have modernised the delivery infrastructure, but the core legal framework remains the same:

• The Disability Standards for Education 2005 still mandates reasonable adjustments for all students with disability
• The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 still prohibits discrimination in educational enrolment and participation
• The One Plan remains the primary document for recording and reviewing those adjustments
• The IESP remains the funding mechanism, with higher-level needs still requiring individual applications

The reforms add tools and create obligations for schools. But claiming these tools — the AIT, the Tailored Learning pathway, the strengthened enrolment protections — requires families to know they exist and ask for them specifically.

The South Australia Disability Support Blueprint covers how to use the new reform mechanisms effectively alongside the existing IESP and One Plan frameworks.

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