“Seven in 10 people who joined the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) in the past year had a primary diagnosis of autism, and most were children” (The SHM, 19 August 2025).
The NDIS was introduced in 2013. Since that time, the number of children in schools who have a diagnosis has exploded. Each of those diagnosed children are eligible for additional government funding and require an Individual Education Plan (IEP). Those plans stipulate the reasonable adjustments a teacher needs to make in class for that child to ensure their needs are catered for. Evidence of those adjustments must be collected by schools for submission to the National Collection of Consistent Data (NCCD) regulator.
Schools can randomly be selected for an audit by NCCD authorities. If they haven’t been collecting appropriate evidence, falsely claiming funding for students, or misusing those funds, there are hefty penalties.
The stakes are high for schools. Students with disabilities attract considerable money, and when the numbers of students on a diagnosis increases, so increases the stakes, and the workload.
Most schools don’t have in place an effective system for developing IEPs and distributing to teachers the information they need to document the evidence required. Schools may develop a plan within their Learning, or Student Management System but then they must rely on every teacher to log into the system, look up the student to find the IEP, and include the adjustments in their lesson planning documentation. Other schools might email the teacher the IEP and expect that teacher remain on top of their inbox.
I know of one large school that, when faced with an NCCD audit, had to take eight staff off class for two weeks to ensure everything was in order, so chaotic was the documentation.
The workload that has been placed on teachers because of NCCD cannot be underestimated. Reports indicate that there has been a 90% increase in a teacher’s administrative workload since the introduction of the NDIS. Some teachers can have up to a third of their class on an IEP, and with diagnoses of autism continuing to rise, that workload continues to increase.
For a teacher, there is often very little guidance as to what evidence is needed and for which students, so, driven by a fear of getting it wrong, they over document, creating for themselves far more work that what is required.
No wonder teachers are burning out.
The collection of evidence is not just a problem for the teacher, but also the business manager of a school. Come budget time they need to know exactly how many students are on IEPs and what their diagnosis is so they can prepare returns and budget accordingly for the following year.
NCCD is a big issue for schools and for teachers and is growing.
What schools need
Schools and teachers don’t need more compliance pressure. They need systems that:
- Streamline IEP creation and parent sign-off.
- Push required adjustments directly into teachers’ planning.
- Capture evidence automatically — time-stamped and stored.
- Give learning support staff live monitoring tools to adapt plans instantly.
- Provide business managers with dashboards for accurate returns and forward planning.
When NCCD processes are simplified, everyone benefits. Teachers have their workloads reduced and stress levels go down. As a result, students receive better support and experience stronger relationships with their teachers: learning improves. School leaders have clarity and confidence in the data so they can simply and cost-effectively meet compliance needs and forward budget.
The Vivedus team understands the NCCD challenge because we’ve lived it in schools. That’s why we built the Vivedus Platform — a planning tool designed by educators, for educators. It tackles many of the daily challenges schools face, but none more critical than NCCD. By providing a clear, consistent system, the Platform takes the complexity out of compliance and makes evidence collection simple for everyone — teachers, leaders, and business managers alike.
