Information Notice

Background

On 10 May 2013, all Education Ministers from Commonwealth, state and territory governments endorsed the implementation of a Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD) in all Australian schools (government, independent and Catholic).

The nationally consistent approach to data collection provides all Australian schools, education authorities and the community with a clear picture of the number of students receiving educational adjustments because of disability in schools, and the levels of adjustment they are provided to enable them to participate in education on the same basis as other students.

Authority for the NCCD

The Australian Education Regulation 2013 (Cth) (the Australian Education Regulation) requires the operators of all government and non-government schools that receive Australian Government schools funding (approved authorities), to provide information to the Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment(the Department) for the purposes of the NCCD.

The Australian Education Regulation is on the Federal Register of Legislation website (www.legislation.gov.au/Current/F2018C00920).

The information that approved authorities must provide to the Department is set out at section 58A of the Australian Education Regulation. This includes, in relation to each student with a disability at a school location (campus) operated by the approved authority:

the student’s level of adjustment (defined in the NCCD Guidelines as any one of the following: support provided within quality differentiated teaching practice (QDTP); supplementary; substantial; or extensive adjustment)
the student’s category of disability (defined in the NCCD Guidelines as any one of the following: physical; cognitive; sensory; or social/emotional)
the student’s year of schooling
for a part time student, the fraction of the full time study load that the student is undertaking.

Other details about the information to be collected and the format in which the information is to be provided to the Department, are contained in guidelines approved by the Education Council (the committee of the Council of Australian Governments comprising the Commonwealth and state and territory Ministers responsible for education). The NCCD Guidelines are available on the NCCD Portal (www.nccd.edu.au/).

Privacy arrangements

The Department is committed to the protection of privacy and must comply with the Australian Privacy Principles contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (the Privacy Act) when handling any personal information. ‘Personal information’ under the Privacy Act means information or opinion about an identified individual or an individual who is reasonably identifiable.

When student information is provided to the Department for the purposes of the NCCD, that information must not explicitly identify any student (subsection 58A(3) of the Regulation). For example, student names or student identifiers are not provided. Generally speaking, therefore, information provided to the Department for the purposes of the NCCD should not identify or reasonably identify individual students.

In limited cases, a student may be reasonably identifiable from the information provided by an approved authority to comply with the NCCD requirements (for example, because of the small size of a particular school). To the extent this may occur, the disclosure of such personal information to the Department by an approved authority for a school, and the collection of that information by the Department, are both required and authorised by law for the purposes of the Privacy Act.

In addition to the NCCD data collection process, the Department undertakes assurance activities to ensure that information it is provided with for the purposes of the NCCD is complete and accurate. Where this occurs, an authorised person under the Australian Education Regulation may collect and use personal information from approved authorities, and will handle any such information in accordance with the Privacy Act. The collection and use of personal information in such circumstances is authorised by law for the purposes of the Privacy Act.

Collection, use and disclosure of information from the NCCD

The information collected by approved authorities for the purposes of the NCCD will be provided to the Department. In some cases, this will involve the school providing the information directly to the Department, and in other cases the school will provide the information to its state or territory government agency (or other relevant body) in the first instance, depending on the school’s particular arrangements. In such circumstances, that state or territory government agency, or other relevant body, will then provide the information to the Department.

The Department will use information from the NCCD for the purposes of preparing reports for and briefing the Australian Education Senior Officials Committee[1] and the Education Council in relation to the NCCD. Reports and briefing material will not explicitly identify any individual student. To the extent that this material contains information about a reasonably identifiable student, the personal information will be used and disclosed as authorised by law (including as authorised under the Australian Education Regulation).

Information from the NCCD will also be used for policy development undertaken by the Department relating to school education and funding, including informing funding calculations relating to the student with disability funding loading under the Australian Education Act 2013, other policy development as agreed by the Education Council, and as otherwise authorised and required by law (including as authorised under the Australian Education Regulation).

Since 1 January 2018, the NCCD has been used to calculate the Australian Government’s student with disability funding loading for schools. This loading is based on the level of adjustment being provided to the student. The document What is the Government doing to support students with disability? on the Department’s website provides more information (www.education.gov.au/what-government-doing-support-students-disability).

High-level, non-identifying data from the NCCD is also used to produce the annual National Report on Schooling in Australia (www.acara.edu.au/reporting/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia-data-portal) and the annual Report on Government Services (www.pc.gov.au/research/ongoing/report-on-government-services).

[1] The Education Council is primarily supported by a group of senior officials with responsibility for school education, early childhood and higher education who meet as the Australian Education Senior Officials Committee. The Committee is directly responsible to Council for the execution of Education Council decisions. Visit the Education Council’s website for more information about the Australian Education Senior Officials Committee (www.educationcouncil.edu.au/EC-AESOC.aspx).

The NCCD is held and published by the Education Council on the Reports and Publications page of the Education Council website (www.educationcouncil.edu.au/EC-Reports-and-Publications.aspx).

Contact

[1]You can get more information about the way in which the Department manages personal information in our full privacy policy on the Department’s website (www.education.gov.au/privacy), or email the Department to request a copy of our full privacy policy at privacy@dese.gov.au.

Any questions parents/carers or schools have about the completion of the NCCD may be directed to the key contacts listed on the NCCD Portal (www.nccd.edu.au/help-and-support/key-contacts).

With the exception of the Commonwealth Coat of Arms, the Department’s logo, any material protected by a trade mark and where otherwise noted all material presented in this document is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/) licence.

The details of the relevant licence conditions are available on the Creative Commons website (accessible using the links provided) as is the full legal code for the CC BY 4.0 International (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode).

The document must be attributed as the Information notice on Nationally Consistent Collection of Data – Students with Disability.

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