The number of suspension days among ACT public school students jumped by more than a third in 2019, while the number of students suspended was the highest in four years.
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Updated advice will this week be provided to school principals, following a tribunal decision late last year to overturn a primary school principal's decision to suspend a child with a disability for a day.
A spokeswoman for Education Minister Yvette Berry confirmed there was a higher representation of students with a disability among suspended students.
"All jurisdictions find a higher representation of students with a disability in suspension data, the ACT is no different in this regard," the spokeswoman said.
"This is because temporarily withdrawing a student from school activities and school grounds assists the school to ensure that appropriate measures are in place to meet a student's needs and keep our staff and students safe."
While the statistics are kept by the education directorate, they were not released to protect student privacy, the spokeswoman said.
"The ACT government's Future of Education Strategy includes as a key principle the goal of an inclusive education system," she said.
"The government recognises that pursuing this goal requires cultural and systematic change that will take time."
"As part of delivering its election commitments, the government will be working with students with disabilities and their families on how to take steps towards an education system that includes people with disabilities in ways that suits them."
A spokesman for the Education Directorate told The Canberra Times earlier this month school suspensions data did not record if students had a disability
In 2019, there were 5962 suspension days across the ACT public school system, up from 4377 days in 2018.
There were more than 3000 suspension incidents in 2019, up from just over 2100 in 2018.
The high school suspension rate jumped from 5.1 per cent in 2018 to 7 per cent in 2019. The primary school rate increased from 1.6 per cent to 2.2 per cent in the same period.
Ms Berry's spokeswoman said 2020 data was not yet available, and it would be affected by the COVID-19 shutdowns.
The data does not cover non-government schools, which do not report suspension rates publicly and do not provide the information to the Education Directorate.
Children and Young People with Disability Australia chief executive Mary Sayers said the overrepresentation of students with a disability in suspension statistics often showed students were not getting enough support.
"We need to make sure that our school systems are truly inclusive. And school suspensions, if you like, are symptoms that the school system is not inclusive," Ms Sayers said.
Ms Sayers said the Commonwealth needed to step up and recast the education system to meet the needs of students with disability, who make up 20 per cent of school populations nationally.
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"[The Commonwealth] hold the funding levers. They hold the legislation levers. And we've been calling for a national inclusive education act that all the states and the territories agree to, so that we can realise the human rights of students with disability," she said.
Ms Sayers said it was important for education systems to collect non-aggregated data which accurately captured the experience of students with disability in order to identify problems.
"We know later outcomes for students with disability are poorer; we know their educational outcomes are poorer; we know that they're less likely to gain employment," she said.
"If we don't get it right at schools, how can we expect to get it right later on? But we do know from the evidence that when the right supports are put in place, students with disability do really well."
A 2019 Children and Young People with Disability Australia national survey found 14.7 per cent of students with disability were suspended in the preceding year. More than 40 per cent were excluded from events or activities at school.
The tribunal heard in an earlier incident the boy's father found his son "alone, distressed and dishevelled" in a locked classroom.
The tribunal found the student should not have been suspended after he allegedly attempted to strangle, scratch and kick other students and began taping a classroom door shut in July 2019, after a period where he had reportedly been bullied.
Jasper Lindell
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
