NCCD for Dummies

The NCCD is the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data for students with a disability in Australia.

This data is submitted as part of the midyear census by each school on the first Friday in August each year.

What is disability as defined in the Disability Discrimination Act 1992?

Directly quoted from the act:

The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA)defines disability broadly as:

• total or partial loss of the person's bodily or mental functions; or
• total or partial loss of a part of the body; or
• the presence in the body of organisms causing disease or illness; or
• the presence in the body of organisms capable of causing disease or illness; or
• the malfunction, malformation or disfigurement of a part of the person's body; or
• a disorder or malfunction that results in the person learning differently from a person without the disorder or malfunction; or
• a disorder, illness or disease that affects a person's thought processes, perception of reality, emotions or judgement or that results in disturbed behaviour;

and includes a disability that:

• presently exists; or
• previously existed but no longer exists; or
• may exist in the future (including because of a genetic predisposition to that disability); or
• is imputed to a person.

For the purposes of NCCD the adjustments required by the student must be due to disability not another reason e.g. home life, poor attendance, illness etc. There are some good examples in the case studies to explore this further.

Case studies - Nationally Consistent Collection of Data (nccd.edu.au)

4 Levels of support for NCCD

• QDTP - quality differentiated teaching practice - adjustments are part of good teaching practice
• Supplementary - adjustments provided on some days at some times
• Substantial - adjustments provided on most days at most times
• Extensive - adjustments provided on all days at all times

4 Categories of disability for NCCD

• Cognitive
• Social/ emotional
• Physical
• Sensory - vision, hearing (not sensory processing difficulties)

The category is determined by the evidence of adjustments. This may or may not be directly related to the diagnosis. For example an young student with Autism may have difficulties with both the social/emotional aspects of school and the academic curriculum. The evidence of adjustments will guide you which category to select - where have more adjustments been provided?

4 Categories of evidence required for NCCD

• assessed individual needs of the student - diagnosis documentation (or internal assessments for imputed students)
• adjustments being provided to the student to address their assessed needs associated with disability – this includes support provided within quality differentiated practice - this is best collected in teachers planning documents
• ongoing monitoring and review of the adjustments - this can be part of the IEP (or similar) and at the end of planning documents, parent teacher interview notes
• consultation and collaboration with the student and/or parents, guardians or carers, or associates - emails, IEP meeting notes, meeting notes, parent teacher interview notes

NCCD website

Teacher Planning - a further note

Teachers often report that they are making adjustments for the NCCD. This is not actually the case. Under disability law and the AITSL teacher standards, teachers are expected to make and record adjustments for students in their classes. The NCCD simply captures this data. The evidence for NCCD should be part of the normal school processes and not something extra.

How much evidence?

Schools need to collect evidence over 10 weeks of the school year, this does not have to be 10 consecutive weeks. Obviously, the higher the student need, the more evidence required. I like to refer back to the frequency wordings from the selecting the levels of adjustment document - some days, some times; most days, most times etc

Imputed students

Where the student does not have a diagnosed disability but the student is requiring high levels of adjustments schools may decide to impute the student. Once this is done the student is protected by the DDA and this cannot be removed. Obviously this needs to be done with the parents understanding and consent. Be aware that if you impute a student you must have sufficient evidence (possibly more than a student with a diagnosed disability) to add the student to the census.

From the NCCD documents: "An ‘imputed’ disability is something that someone believes another person has. To impute a disability the school team must have reasonable grounds to make such a judgement. At a minimum the student’s parent, guardian or carer must have been consulted about concerns the school has and been involved in identifying reasonable adjustments to address the identified concerns."

Who decides the student levels?

The school NCCD team (not individual teachers usually) will decide student levels based on the written evidence they have. They should review the evidence in each of the 4 categories and make a judgement based on the evidence available. A thorough moderation process should be in place to check for evidence in each category and decide an overall level.

This document will help decide which level. Selecting the level of adjustment (nccd.edu.au)

My advice is to print A3 size so you can read it more easily!

Where to learn more

The NCCD website has lots of videos and handouts to support you with this process.

They also have many case studies for discussion and training of key staff.