Running a Student Support Group (SSG) Meeting: A Practical Guide for Australian Schools

What an SSG is (and what it is for)

The Student Support Group goes by different names in different states and sectors, but the function is consistent: it is the forum where the people who know a student best meet to agree how the school will adjust teaching and the environment so the student can access learning on the same basis as their peers. That obligation flows from the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and the Disability Standards for Education 2005 — the same legal anchors that underpin the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD).

The SSG is *not* a diagnostic meeting and it is not a place to debate funding. It exists to do four practical things:

• Confirm the student's assessed individual needs and the functional impact of disability.
• Agree the adjustments the school will provide and at what level.
• Consult with parents/carers and the student about those adjustments.
• Monitor and review how the adjustments are working and decide what changes next.

If those four verbs sound familiar, it is because they map directly onto the four NCCD evidence areas: assessed individual need; adjustments provided; consultation & collaboration; and monitoring & review. A well-chaired SSG is the single most efficient place in the school year to generate evidence across all four.

Who should be in the room

An SSG works best small and consistent. Typical participants:

• The parent(s)/carer(s) — central, not optional. Consultation with parents/carers is a requirement of the national framework.
• The student, where developmentally appropriate. The framework explicitly values consultation with the student "where appropriate", and even brief, age-suitable input is worth minuting.
• A school leader or the Disability Inclusion / Learning Support Coordinator to chair and hold the thread across meetings.
• The classroom teacher (primary) or a nominated coordinating teacher (secondary) who can speak to day-to-day practice.
• Education support staff who deliver the adjustments.
• Specialists where relevant — school psychologist, counsellor, speech pathologist, OT — either in person or via a written report tabled at the meeting.

A useful principle: the SSG should include everyone who *provides* or *observes* the adjustment, because they are the people who can later attest that it was actually delivered — not just planned. For more on who carries this work and how the role sits across the school, see our guide for Disability Inclusion Coordinators.

A workable SSG agenda

Keep meetings to 30–45 minutes with a predictable shape. A reusable agenda also makes your minutes consistent, which auditors and moderators value.

1. Welcome, purpose, and consent to record minutes (2 min). Confirm who is present and note any apologies.
2. Student voice / parent perspective (5–10 min). What is going well, what is hard, what has changed at home or school.
3. Review of current adjustments (10 min). For each adjustment agreed last time: is it being provided, is it working, what does the data say?
4. Assessed need and functional impact (5 min). Restate the functional impact of disability the team is responding to — access to learning, communication, participation, regulation, mobility, health — *not* academic gaps, behaviour, attendance or home circumstances in isolation.
5. New or changed adjustments (10 min). Agree specific actions, the level of adjustment, who is responsible, and by when.
6. Next review date (2 min). Set it before everyone leaves.

A short, repeated structure is also what lets the SSG feed the wider personalised learning and support picture — the five areas of curriculum/teaching & learning, communication, participation, health & personal care, and movement/mobility.

Connecting the SSG to the NCCD model

The NCCD model is four questions the school team answers for each student: (1) Is an adjustment being provided? (2) What is the level — Quality Differentiated Teaching Practice (QDTP), Supplementary, Substantial, or Extensive (record the level provided *most of the time*)? (3) What is the category of disability — physical, cognitive, sensory, or social/emotional — which the team may impute from available evidence without a formal diagnosis, provided adjustments are being made? (4) Can it be evidenced?

The SSG is where questions 1–3 are decided as a team and question 4 begins to be answered, because the meeting itself generates the evidence. It can help to keep the eight domains of functioning in mind as an organising layer — curriculum access & learning, attention/executive function & self-regulation, communication, social/emotional & behavioural wellbeing, safety & risk, sensory function, mobility & movement, and health & personal care — because they prompt the team to name the *functional* impact rather than a label. For the full picture of how levels are evidenced, see our NCCD adjustment levels documentation guide.

Two points worth saying plainly at the meeting: parental consent is not required to count a student in the NCCD, but consultation is — and the 2026 guidance tightened consultation documentation, asking schools to record a reason if consultation did not precede an adjustment. Schools are expected to reuse existing records; the SSG minute *is* the record, so you do not need to create a separate NCCD form.

What to document: turning minutes into evidence

Good SSG minutes are concise, factual and decision-focused. Capture these fields every time:

• Date, attendees and apologies — this is your consultation & collaboration evidence. Note that parents/carers (and the student, where appropriate) were present or consulted.
• The functional need being addressed — described as impact on access/participation, mapped to a domain of functioning.
• Adjustments reviewed — for each, whether it was *provided*, and the evidence/data that it was (e.g. "aide support delivered daily Term 2", "visual schedule used at each transition").
• Adjustments agreed going forward — specific, with the responsible person and a date.
• Level decision and rationale — the level provided most of the time, and *why*, framed against actual practice rather than diagnosis.
• Category (imputed or diagnosed) and the evidence basis.
• Next review date.

Worked example

> SSG — Year 4 student — 12 May 2026

> Present: Parent (mother), DIC (chair), classroom teacher, education support officer. Apologies: school psychologist (report tabled).

> Functional need: Difficulty sustaining attention and self-regulating during whole-class instruction (domain: Attention, Executive Function & Self-Regulation; category: cognitive, imputed).

> Adjustments reviewed: Chunked instructions + visual timer — *provided* daily; ESO check-ins — *provided* 3×/week; both reported by teacher as effective, work-completion data improving.

> Adjustments agreed: Continue current supports; add a movement break before literacy block (teacher, from 19 May); psychologist to observe and advise on regulation strategies (by end Term 2).

> Level: Supplementary — supports are additional and regular but not required at all times.

> Consultation: Parent contributed home strategies; agreed to plan. Student's view sought by teacher; prefers the visual timer.

> Next review: Week 3, Term 3.

That single minute supplies assessed need, adjustments provided, consultation and the start of monitoring & review — and it names a defensible level. Repeated across the year, these minutes are exactly the trail an auditor or moderator looks for.

Tying it to the annual cycle and the 10-week rule

NCCD evidence must show that reasonable adjustments were in place for at least 10 weeks within the 12 months before the census (the census reference date is the first Friday in August); Extensive adjustments must be in place at all times. The annual rhythm runs Planning (Term 1) → Implementation (Term 2) → Validation and submission (Term 3) → Reflection (Term 4), with moderation building consistent judgements and the principal attesting that there is evidence for every student's inclusion, category and level.

Map your SSG cadence onto that cycle: an opening SSG early in Term 1 to plan, a mid-year review in Term 2 (which conveniently lands inside the 10-week evidence window), and a check-in before the August census. Dated minutes across those points demonstrate both consultation *and* the duration of adjustments — the two things schools most often struggle to evidence after the fact. Whatever the plan is called in your state — IEP, ILP, PLSP, ICP, NEP or PLP — it is just a container for the same NCCD-aligned content the SSG produces. For the broader evidence picture, see our NCCD evidence collection guide.

Bringing it together

The SSG is the most under-rated piece of NCCD infrastructure most schools already have. You do not need new forms; you need consistent, dated minutes that name the functional need, confirm adjustments were *provided*, capture genuine consultation, and set a review date. Do that every meeting and your consultation & monitoring evidence largely writes itself.

If your team is spending more time writing up SSGs than running them, that is exactly the kind of administrative load Grounded Scribe is built to lift — capturing meeting discussion and turning it into structured, NCCD-ready records, Australian-hosted and aligned with the Australian Privacy Principles. To see how it supports inclusion teams end to end, explore Grounded Scribe for Disability Inclusion Coordinators.

*This article is general guidance aligned with the national NCCD framework and data standards. It is not legal or funding advice, and it does not promise any funding outcome. Always follow your sector's and state's current NCCD guidelines.*