Like most parents, Alex Baltins​ wanted to find the best school for her son before he started kindergarten and made inquiries with a couple of schools near her home in Sydney's south.

"They sounded quite keen until I said my child has autism. Then it was like, 'Sorry, no'," she said. "I felt as if no one wanted my son."

A quality education experience for a student with disability is still likened to winning the lottery. 

Children with Disability Australia

What’s the most reliable way to know if your child has autism? Is it a genetic test? Or are more traditional behavioral assessments, which measure talking and social skills, more accurate? The latest research provides some answers

DAVID MARK: A new study indicates that the number of autism cases in Australia is increasing among younger children.

Researchers have found that 1.5 per cent of all 10 and 11 year olds have an autism spectrum condition, compared to 2.5 per cent of four and five year olds.

What's not clear is whether the condition is becoming more prevalent, or if it's simply being diagnosed more effectively.



Whatever the cause, experts say Australian schools need to prepare for an increase of autistic students.



Lucy Carter prepared this report.

MORE Australian children are being diagnosed with autism.

BUT researchers don't know if it's because the condition is becoming more prevalent or if autism is being diagnosed earlier.

The Murdoch Children's Research Institute also found the overwhelming majority of children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are boys.

The development of 10,000 children was studied in two separate waves at two yearly intervals.

Half were recruited into the study at birth and the others in preschool.

CHILDREN with disabilities are being let down by Tasmanian schools, says a report.

The Ministerial Taskforce report, obtained by the Mercury, urges the full take-up of the Gonski funding principles.

It outlines several concerns:

It takes a lot to wipe the smile from Gary Comerford's face.

For more than 20 years, he's lived happily in the government-run Fairweather House disability group home.

But Mr Comerford, who has an intellectual disability, says he was made to feel terrified in his own home when a support worker allegedly assaulted him after an argument about a key to the letterbox last year.

The alleged attack shocked his family. But it was the government's response that outraged them even more.

Nearly half of all Victoria's disability sector employees have witnessed their co-workers perpetrate acts of abuse, violence or neglect on people with disabilities living in their care, a survey reveals.

The findings have raised fresh concerns around the lack of qualifications needed to work in the industry, and warnings that abuse will only increase without reforms to "professionalise" the sector before it doubles in size under the National Disability Insurance Scheme.