Building good governance together
Darlene McLennan, Manager, ADCET
I've worked in the disability sector for over 40 years, with a focus on students with disability in tertiary education for two decades. I think the latest changes to the Disability Support Fund (DSF) have started to shift who gets a say in how our universities work and are already having a positive impact. We’ve already seen new roles created that focus on UDL implementation, assistive technology and a focus on ensuring lived experience-led governance.
This comes at an important time where there is a clear requirement for serious reform and investment. There are two indicators that tell us we need to do far more in tertiary education. Firstly, the growth of students with disability in our schools receiving reasonable adjustments (now at 27% according to ACARA) and secondly an economy where Jobs and Skills Australia predict that 9 out of 10 new jobs will require a postsecondary education. If we don’t make real progress now, we will be letting down a generation of learners and missing out on the talents that they will bring.
If you haven't caught up with these changes yet, the new governance requirements ask Table A universities to do two things. Firstly, set up a disability governance committee as a subcommittee of the university's principal governing body, and publish its membership and terms of reference, and secondly, develop disability education and workforce strategies with clear activities and key performance indicators, and publish them on the university's public website.
On paper these look like compliance items; however, I think that they are much more than that.
For years, people with disability have been consulted, surveyed and invited to focus groups, and then left out of the room when the actual decisions were made. A governance committee that reports to council or senate changes that. It puts disability on the agenda at the level where priorities are set and budgets are signed off. Publishing who sits on the governance committee and what it's there to do, means students and staff can see who is making decisions on their behalf and ask them questions.
The strategies work the same way. Having to write down what you plan to do, how you'll measure it, and then put it on your website for anyone to read is a very different thing from a good intention buried in a policy document. I'm also particularly pleased to see the workforce included. Staff with disability are too often an afterthought in these conversations, and an institution that doesn't support its own staff is unlikely to get it right for students.
At ADCET we talk a lot about building something once so the whole sector can use it, rather than each university duplicating effort and starting from scratch. Some institutions are already doing thoughtful work here: committees with strong student voice, strategies that were genuinely co-designed, creative ways of making governance more accessible.
ADCET is keen to showcase that good practice. If your university has done something you're proud of, or even something that's halfway there that you feel is worth sharing, please get in touch at admin@adcet.edu.au. We'd love to help you tell the story so others can learn from it.
October 2026