Schools Plus Funding Homeschool WA Disability: What You Lose and What Replaces It
Schools Plus Funding Homeschool WA Disability: What You Lose and What Replaces It
Schools Plus is Western Australia's state government disability funding system for public school students. It pays for Education Assistants, specialist support staff visits, access to Education Support Centres, and the additional resources a child with a disability needs to participate in mainstream schooling. For many families, it represents thousands of dollars per year in support that has been painstakingly fought for through assessments, reviews, and appeal processes.
When a family with a child on Schools Plus decides to withdraw and home educate, that funding ends on the day the child's school enrolment is cancelled. It is not portable. There is no equivalent state-level disability funding for home educators in Western Australia.
This is the most significant material change for families withdrawing a child with disability from WA government schools, and it deserves a clear-eyed assessment before the withdrawal decision is finalised.
What Schools Plus Actually Funds
Schools Plus funding is allocated to schools (not to families) based on student need profiles. The school receives the funding and deploys it as Education Assistant hours, specialist staff visits, and additional classroom resources. A student with significant needs might attract a substantial annual Schools Plus allocation — enough to fund meaningful daily EA support and regular visits from an OT, speech pathologist, or behaviour support practitioner.
The critical point is that you as a parent never received this money directly, and it was always tied to school enrolment. When you withdraw, the school's Schools Plus allocation simply adjusts down — the funding was never yours to take.
This is not a decision made against home educators specifically. The state's disability funding architecture for schools is designed around institutional delivery. There is no mechanism for the Department of Education to redirect a Schools Plus allocation to a family.
Understanding What You Are Walking Away From
Before withdrawing, it is worth calculating your child's actual Schools Plus allocation in concrete terms. Contact the school's learning support coordinator or deputy principal and ask:
- How many hours per week is my child currently receiving Education Assistant support?
- How frequently does each specialist (OT, speech, behaviour) visit? For how long per session?
- Is my child's enrolment attracting any additional resource funding beyond EA hours?
Convert this to a realistic dollar value. An EA at a WA Level 3 classification costs roughly $35-45 per hour. A visiting OT or speech pathologist costs $80-120 per session. If your child is receiving 20 hours per week of EA support and twice-weekly specialist visits, the annual Schools Plus investment may be $70,000 or more. Walking away from that without a funded alternative in place is a significant financial and practical decision.
What NDIS Can Replace
The National Disability Insurance Scheme is the primary funding pathway available to home-educating families with children who have disabilities. Unlike Schools Plus, NDIS plans are portable — they are not affected by whether your child attends school, home educates, or is otherwise not in the school system.
NDIS can fund:
- Occupational therapy, speech pathology, psychology, and physiotherapy
- Allied health assistant support under therapist supervision
- Support coordination (for families managing complex plans)
- Therapeutic supports including behaviour intervention and early childhood approaches
- Assistive technology and home modifications where assessed as necessary
What NDIS does not fund is the equivalent of a full-time Education Assistant sitting beside your child for the school day. The EA model is an educational delivery model funded through the school system; NDIS funds therapeutic and functional outcomes, not instructional supervision.
For many children, the shift from EA-supported schooling to home education plus NDIS-funded therapy is a net improvement — therapy sessions happen in the child's natural environment, generalisation is stronger, and the child is no longer trying to access curriculum in a setting that was causing secondary stress. For others, particularly those who needed EA support primarily for safety or intensive one-to-one instruction, the gap is real.
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Planning the Transition: Timing and Sequencing
If you are planning a withdrawal rather than managing a crisis, the sequencing matters.
Step 1: Confirm your child's NDIS eligibility and plan status. If your child does not yet have an NDIS plan, the access request process can take three to six months or longer. Begin this before withdrawing if at all possible. A child with a current diagnosis and school-based documentation (psychological assessments, EA logs, specialist reports) typically has a strong access case.
Step 2: Request a plan review if you already have an NDIS plan. A plan set up when your child was in school may not adequately fund the supports you will need at home. Therapy hours may need to increase to compensate for the loss of school-based specialist visits. A plan review can adjust this — but it takes time to process. Initiate this before withdrawal.
Step 3: Obtain all current Schools Plus-funded reports and records. Your child's OT, speech pathologist, and behaviour support practitioner should each provide a progress summary and current goal documentation before you withdraw. These reports serve two purposes: they give your NDIS planner evidence of therapeutic needs, and they give your home education evidence portfolio a professional baseline.
Step 4: Identify which supports can transfer to a home-based model. Some of the specialists currently visiting your child at school may be willing to continue working with your child at home or in a clinic setting through NDIS funding. Contact them before withdrawing to understand what a post-withdrawal arrangement might look like.
Education Support Centres: Worth Considering Before You Decide
If your child's primary difficulty was with the social complexity of a mainstream classroom rather than with schooling itself, an Education Support Centre or Specialist School may be worth exploring as an alternative before committing to home education.
ESCs are specialist government schools for students with significant disabilities. They have lower ratios, staff trained specifically in disability support, and access to the same Schools Plus funding model as mainstream schools — often with considerably more intensive resource allocation.
Placement at an ESC requires an assessment and a recommendation through the specialist school placement process, and availability varies by region. In metro Perth, options exist; in regional WA, they may not. But if your child's needs are intensive enough that the EA hours and specialist support they are receiving at school are genuinely irreplaceable, ESC placement may offer a better match than home education for some families.
The Ongoing Funding Reality for Home Educators
The absence of state-level disability funding for WA home educators is a structural gap that advocacy organisations including HEWA have raised with the Department of Education. There have been no concrete changes to date. Home-educating families with children who have disabilities rely on NDIS for therapeutic support and largely self-fund the educational delivery itself.
For some families, particularly those with solid NDIS plans and children whose needs are primarily therapeutic rather than requiring daily intensive supervision, this works well. For families where the Schools Plus EA hours were providing safety-critical support — for a child who could not be left without line-of-sight supervision, for example — the funding gap is a real constraint that needs to be built into the withdrawal decision.
Understanding the full picture of what changes is not an argument against home education. It is the foundation of making a decision that is sustainable for your family. The Western Australia Legal Withdrawal Blueprint covers the withdrawal process and the broader system for families navigating disability alongside home education.
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