Part 3 of a three-part series on NCCD funding, educational support, and school governance.

Imagine sitting around the Board table at an alternative school preparing for another year of growth. The Principal reports strong enrolment demand, the Business Manager presents a healthy forecast, and additional staffing appears both affordable and necessary. Educational purpose and financial capacity seem unusually well acquainted, so directors have good reason to feel encouraged.

Then someone asks how the incoming students have been assessed for funding.

The forecast, it emerges, assumes they will all attract Extensive funding, broadly consistent with the existing cohort. Their individual adjustment requirements have yet to be assessed; some supporting evidence remains outstanding; and the assumption has gained credibility through its repeated appearance in the Board papers. By the time it reaches the budget, it has shed its provisional status, with no one quite remembering having approved the promotion.

This is a hypothetical situation, but it illustrates a familiar governance problem: polished reporting can give an uncertain assumption a remarkably respectable appearance.

The enrolment report demonstrates demand, the staffing proposal explains capacity, and the budget confirms affordability. Each one answers a thoughtful question. Unfortunately, none establishes whether the anticipated funding is supported by the students’ circumstances and the adjustments the school will actually provide.

For me, this is where Board assurance begins. Directors need to follow the reasoning pathway that connects enrolments, educational support, evidence, staffing, and funding, applying enough scrutiny to distinguish an established position from an optimistic expectation.

A spreadsheet can reconcile to the dollar while the reasoning beneath it remains several questions short of convincing.

NCCD funding risk begins before the budget

Across this series, I have explored the scrutiny of NCCD funding and the professional judgment behind adjustment classifications. This final article considers how Boards gain assurance before those judgments are tested by an auditor.

By the time a budget reaches directors, many decisions have already taken up residence in its figures. Enrolment expectations, support requirements, staffing arrangements, and funding classifications arrive compressed into revenue and expenditure lines, with much of their uncertainty ironed out by presentation.

A Board can examine those figures carefully and still miss the assumptions doing the heavy lifting.

The ACNC’s guidance on the duties of Responsible People makes an important distinction. Directors can draw on expertise, but they still need to inform themselves adequately and independently assess the advice received.

Trust in leadership matters. As does understanding how leadership reached its conclusions. While some directors may feel awkward – perhaps sometimes silly- asking for that explanation is part of a director’s job.

Different schools require different assurance

NCCD operates across settings with quite different educational and economic realities. A useful Board discussion, therefore, begins with the school directors actually governing, rather than with an imaginary average school that exists mainly in aggregated statistics.

Mainstream schools: the whole-school average can conceal the individual

A mainstream school may have students requiring adjustments scattered across year levels and classrooms. Its overall staffing ratio might appear comfortable while revealing very little about whether particular students receive the intended assistance.

The Board needs to understand how support reaches those students: how aides are deployed, how teachers access specialist advice, and how continuity is maintained through timetabling changes or staff absences.

The financial question includes the contribution the school makes beyond additional funding. The educational question is whether its arrangements work for the individual student. And both deserve an answer.

Alternative schools: an enrolment pathway is not a funding classification

An alternative school may offer a fresh start to students who have disengaged from education for different and overlapping reasons.

That shared experience does not mean every student has the same adjustment requirement. Directors need assurance that the school distinguishes its reasons for offering a place from the evidence supporting disability-related funding.

A forecast that assigns the same classification to every incoming student should spark curiosity at the Board table. Consistency is reassuring when it results from careful assessment but less so when it results from a copied formula.

Specialist schools: support can arrive before funding certainty

A specialist school may need staff, expertise, and appropriate facilities available from a student’s first day, while evidence and reporting questions remain unresolved.

Previous records may be incomplete, difficult to obtain, or insufficient to explain adjustments previously delivered. The school still has a student to educate while it works through those issues.

Directors need to see where uncertainty sits, what authoritative advice has been sought, and how the school is managing the exposure. Necessary support and confirmed funding should each be understood on their own terms.

Across these settings, diagnosis, staffing ratios, class sizes, and school type provide context. But none can do the work of an individual assessment.

Six connections every Board should examine

I would encourage directors to request a connected account of the following relationships. This framework supports governance scrutiny; classification decisions remain grounded in official guidance and appropriate advice.

These are signals for inquiry, rather than shortcuts to a verdict. A high Extensive proportion warrants understanding, not automatic suspicion. An apparent mismatch between staffing and reported support warrants explanation, not an improvised classification rule from the Board.

Where should directors obtain information they can trust?

The Principal, learning-support leadership, enrolment staff, and Business Manager each hold part of the picture. Their reports become more useful when they explain the same school.

I would expect a coordinated account in which enrolment forecasts reconcile with funding assumptions, staffing plans explain delivery, and evidence reviews support leadership’s confidence. Where the accounts differ, the discrepancy should reach the Board before it reaches an auditor.

The official NCCD Guidelines establish quality-assurance responsibilities for school leadership and approved authorities, including moderation, accuracy, supporting evidence, and approval before submission. Directors should understand how those responsibilities operate within their governance structure.

A proportionate sample review can test whether the process works without turning the Board meeting into a tour of confidential student files. Its findings should identify what was examined, what was missing, and who is addressing it.

“We passed our last audit” is useful history. However, its reassurance has limits when students, staff, systems, and practice have changed since then.

Strategy should shape the model

A school’s business model expresses its educational choices, whether those choices have been made deliberately or accumulated over time.

Roger Martin’s strategy framework connects strategic choices with the capabilities and systems needed to deliver them. That discipline is particularly useful when schools consider expansion.

Another campus, a broader curriculum, or an additional program can each be an exciting possibility. At the same time, bringing them to life may require expertise, infrastructure, and leadership capacity the school is still building. Even a promising enrolment forecast can’t create those capabilities on its own.

Directors should have a clear understanding of what the school aims to provide, what it takes to do so well, and what it may need to stop, simplify, defer, or deliver in partnership with others.

Consolidating administrative tasks, coordinating specialist services, or removing duplicate systems may free up resources to better support students. It’s also worth considering that some apparent savings may simply shift the workload to teachers or reduce support that students rely on.

Sustainability must include the students

Strategic choice operates within schools’ obligations to students with disability, including in independent education.

The Disability Standards for Education address enrolment, participation, consultation, and reasonable adjustments. The framework includes reasonableness considerations and an unjustifiable hardship exception that requires careful assessment. A funding shortfall does not, by itself, establish an exemption.

Directors can therefore explore how to organise resources in a sustainable way while meeting the school’s obligations. Rather than avoiding students whose needs may seem costly, it’s important to understand the model and how it can support them.

Nor should a Board assume that additional funding covers every adjustment cost. It needs visibility of the support delivered, its cost, and the contribution made from other resources.

That information helps directors make deliberate choices about the educational offering rather than discovering, after commitments have been made, that affordability depended on everyone being funded exactly as hoped.

Understand what government intends to examine

The Commonwealth’s School Funding Integrity announcement identifies inaccurate claims, policy loopholes, improved data, and funding that may be over-allocated or accumulated as priorities. Its stated purpose includes directing support as needed.

Boards should take that scrutiny seriously while expecting clear guidance, consistent assessment, and fair review.

Leadership should identify any significant uncertainty in how matters are interpreted and keep a record of the advice that guides its decisions. This helps directors weigh the strength of the school’s position and understand the potential consequences of a dispute.

Those consequences also need separating. A reduction in future income changes the operating outlook; a repayment demand can place an additional claim on cash already supporting current commitments. The response to one will not necessarily solve the other.

Put assurance on the agenda before the audit

At the next appropriate meeting, I would ask leadership to bring the six connections together to show what is established, what remains uncertain, and what requires action.

That gives directors an opportunity to seek clarification, commission targeted review, revisit expansion, or examine commitments while they still have choices.

The most useful outcome is a shared understanding of how the school’s educational promise, delivery model, evidence, and funding support one another. Confidence should grow from that understanding, rather than from the absence of awkward questions.

An audit should test the account the Board already understands, rather than introduce directors to the school they thought they knew.

👉 Just catching up? Read the earlier articles via the links below:

 Part 1: Who Pays for Getting it Wrong?

Part 2: The Judgment Call Behind Substantive or Extensive