It is a nod to the politically correct language ACT Education Minister Joy Burch and her bureaucrats have insisted on using, even in the face of photographic evidence of a two-metre-by-two-metre cube made of blue metal bars with a self-latching door, which was used in a primary school to contain a ten-year-old boy with autism.

But while Emeritus Professor Anthony Shaddock and his esteemed review panel might have saved the minister the embarrassment of calling a cage a cage, they have not cut much policy slack for Ms Burch or Director-General of Education Diane Joseph.

The review is uncompromising in its recommendations and unflinching in its assessment of the problems facing the increasing numbers of Canberra families accessing both mainstream and special education for their children with complex needs.

Sensitively written, after extensive consultation with more than 1700 individuals and organisations, including 300 students, the report attempts to address the lack of clear response pathways schools can travel when a student reaches crisis point. It highlights systemic inadequacies in funding and support for students, pressure on staff to deal with complex needs while undertaking normal classroom duties, and increased responsibility heaped on school principals without either the guidelines or assistance higher up the bureaucratic chain when a situation escalates.

This, in a nutshell, is what drove one school principal to draw $5195 from the school bank account to pay for a cage in a desperate attempt to contain a student who posed a threat to those around him. And this cage, call it what you will, was the reason an expert panel was required to write 278 pages on how the ACT school system is struggling under its own weight.

The ACT government inquiry into this specific incident might have neatly scapegoated the principal, but the Shaddock review goes much deeper than that, peeling back the layers on some of the most complex service delivery in the territory.

In 50 recommendations, Professor Shaddock addresses everything from how to create an appropriate withdrawal space, to assessment regimes for children with complex needs that focus on academic achievement at the potential exclusion of social and emotional wellbeing, and the common resort of suspending a disruptive child and how that risks further exacerbating their distress and behaviour.

For too long, the yawning chasm of emptiness faced by some students once they graduate, or drop out of school, has been ignored by government.

Professor Shaddock wants to know exactly what becomes of these students, and why, through a longitudinal university study.

While it largely makes for heavy reading, the review is characterised by aspiration and the desire to set the bar extraordinarily high when it comes to devising and delivering education for all Canberra students.

"While many ACT schools already strive to implement a student-centred vision, a more ambitious 'whatever it takes' student-centred vision is recommended – one in which each education system and school excels in meeting the personal needs of each student as a child or young person, and does this along with the pursuit of excellence in academic achievement."

This rolled-gold vision of inclusive education might, of course, be harder to achieve when framed in a budget context already struggling to contain light-rail and asbestos blow-outs.

But, to her credit, Ms Burch has accepted all 50 recommendations and announced an immediate $7 million injection into the area.

It could not have been easy waiting for this review to be compiled, given the enormous political damage the minister has already sustained this year as a result of the cage.

One of those recommendations to which she has committed is to report on the ACT's progress in meeting the review's other 49 recommendations. It's a clever strategy indeed.

Professor Shaddock has long been providing expert evidence to government on how to support students, most notably in 2009, when he delivered his first review to government on special education in the ACT. Some of those service-delivery gaps remain today, and are raised in this latest report. But by building some public accountability into his work, this time around, Professor Shaddock appears more likely to make a lasting impact.