By Dr Jodie Long
Australia is at risk of weakening or eliminating the very schools that keep some of its most vulnerable young people connected to education.
Special Assistance Schools are not a marginal extra in the education system. They are a critical re-engagement pathway for young people whose access to learning has been interrupted by trauma, homelessness, family violence, care-system involvement, mental ill health, exclusion or chronic non-attendance.
Schools such as the David Scott School in Frankston, Victoria, work with young people who have already been pushed to the edge of education. For this school, who works alongside approximately 150 students aged 15 to 20, this funding insecurity is not an abstract policy concern. Around one third of students describe living with experiences of homelessness, insecure, unsafe or precarious housing. Many are also navigating youth justice involvement, family violence, drug and alcohol dependency within families, caring responsibilities, mental ill health and disrupted schooling. Many students arrive after repeated experiences of school not working for them, but they show up and they retain their right to education, and the capacity to learn
For these young people, school completion is not simply an academic milestone. It is fraught and has, at times, looked inaccessible to them. Commonly, they are first in family to graduate. School completion is closely connected to future housing stability, employment, health, community safety, reduced justice involvement and lower long-term public cost.
The fiscal argument for protecting this work is clear. O'Connell's 2024 Cost of Late Intervention report, published by Minderoo Foundation and The Front Project, estimates that Australia spends about $22.3bn each year on late intervention systems, including child protection, youth justice, homelessness responses, health crises and unemployment support. This is up from $15.2bn in 2019, a 47% increase that exceeds inflation and population growth.
Demand for Special Assistance Schools is rising sharply. Independent Schools Australia reports that the number of Special Assistance Schools grew from 57 in 2016 to 109 in 2025, while enrolments increased fivefold over the same period. These numbers do not represent a sector problem; they represent young people who already exist, who are already facing inequity, and who need education models capable of reaching them.
Two current pressures now risk undermining that capacity.
First, the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD) is correctly grounded in disability law. Victorian Department of Education guidance indicates that students affected by trauma must only be included in the NCCD where they have a disability as defined under the Disability Discrimination Act and meet the other criteria for inclusion. The concern for Special Assistance Schools is not with the legal principle. It is with the practical consequence: many students require intensive wellbeing, relational and environmental adjustments to access learning, even where their trauma-related barriers are not recognised as high level disability for NCCD purposes.
This sits uneasily beside the National Better and Fairer Schools Agreement 2025-2034, which names 'wellbeing for learning and engagement' as one of three national priority areas. In Special Assistance Schools, wellbeing is not an optional wraparound. It is often the adjustment that makes learning possible.
Second, specific to Victoria, the teacher workforce settlement in Victorian government schools is both necessary and deserved, but it creates a further pressure for no-fee schools such as the David Scott School serving highly disadvantaged cohorts. The Victorian Government has announced that teacher and principal salaries in government schools will rise by at least 28.3 per cent over four years. Fee-paying schools may be able to offset some wage pressure through increased fees. Victorian government school salaries will be funded through government. No-fee Special Assistance Schools have no equivalent capacity to recover these costs, despite relying on specialized and highly skilled teachers and wellbeing staff to deliver intensive re-engagement work.
As one student put it:
“[DSS] works with me, not against me. The teachers all focus on who I am and what I can do, not what I am doing wrong - even when I am doing wrong. Like, I don’t just get away with it, but they don’t just kick me out for it.”
And another:
“I’ve always been told I’d end up I jail. Like, when I was like, grade 3, grade 4. Always. I dunno. I guess if you hear it enough you kind of think that’s the truth. But here, they listen to us, and they don’t tell you you’re not good enough or treat you like a little kid. They listen and they believe that I can do something else. I want to be a police officer. I can’t believe I just said that. But I do. I want to show up when people need me. Like actually show up and help. So I need to finish school for that. They took me down there. I know the pathway. But first I gotta finish this.”
If funding settings fail to recognise this labour, the work of the students and the work of the staff, the system will not save money. It will shift cost downstream, away from prevention and back into crisis.
With more than 25 years’ experience across flexible, trauma-informed and inclusive learning environments, Dr Jodie Long has dedicated her career to supporting young people facing disadvantage, exclusion and systemic inequality. Her work spans alternative schooling, youth justice, adventure therapy and higher education, with a strong focus on equity, student voice and creating learning environments where every young person can thrive.
Sources
• O'Connell, M. (2025). The Cost of Late Intervention in 2024. Minderoo Foundation / The Front Project.
• Australian Government Department of Education. Better and Fairer Schools Agreement 2025-2034 and Full and Fair Funding Agreement materials.
• Victorian Department of Education. NCCD guidance: Student eligibility for inclusion in the NCCD, updated 25 May 2026.
• Independent Schools Australia. Special Assistance Schools sector page, reporting growth from 57 schools in 2016 to 109 in 2025 and fivefold enrolment growth.
• Victorian Government / Premier of Victoria and Australian Education Union Victoria, May 2026 statements on in-principle public school pay agreement.
• United Nations. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26.