Inclusive Education Guidance update
The first round of community consultation for the National Guidance for best practice in inclusive education for autistic students (the Guidance) has wrapped up, and we had an amazing response. Thank you to everyone who participated!
This project aims to produce evidence-based guidance for Australian educators to effectively support autistic students throughout their formal school in mainstream schools – from preschool through to secondary.
Community consultation
The first stage of community consultation was open from 11 August to 5 September and gathered perspectives, insights and preferences about inclusive education practices from a broad range of stakeholders through:
- Surveys for adults – including autistic adults, parents, educators, health professionals and anyone working with autistic children in educations settings.
- Surveys for autistic students – aged 8-18 years
- One-on-one interviews – with autistic students
- Mixed and targeted focus groups – involving autistic students, autistic adults, parents, educators, health professionals and anyone working with autistic children in educations settings.
In September, we also opened targeted consultation to engage experienced school leaders with 10+ years of leadership experience to take part in a Delphi Study – a series of online surveys over a span of several weeks. Once again, we’ve had wonderful support, with principals, deputy principals and heads of inclusion taking part in the study.
Guidance focus
The Guidance will focus on four key areas related to best-practice inclusive education for students:
- Pedagogy and teaching approaches
- Physical environment
- Student experiences
- Collaboration, connections and leadership.
What's next
This project was commissioned by Autism CRC and is being undertaken by researchers from Griffith University, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and La Trobe University. The project team are now working on collating all the data from a systematic review of national and international literature and consultation activities to include in a first draft of the Guidance. Another round of community consultation will take place in early 2026.