Tasmanian Curriculum > Educating students with special or additional needs > Students with disabilities > Guidelines for Individual Education Planning (IEP)

• Background
• Introduction
• Who should have an IEP?
• Model for Individual Education Planning (IEP)
• Process for Individual Education Planning (IEP)
• Intentional inclusion of the IEP in classroom planning
• Templates
  • Cover page [Word 27KB]
  • Supports and accommodations [Word 32KB]
  • Supports and accommodations: ICT [Word 31KB]
  • Key outcomes [Word 39KB]
  • Combined Template (includes cover page, supports and accommodations, key outcomes) [Word 77KB]
• Tips for using templates [Word 26KB]
• References
• Inclusive curriculum glossary
• Key information for school leadership teams: IEPs and students with disabilities [Word 47KB]
• Complete document [PDF 92KB]
  

Background

The development of Guidelines for Individual Education Planning (IEPs) has resulted from recommendations of the Review of the Policy on Inclusion of Students with Disabilities in Regular Schools (2000) and has been informed by issues in the education of students with special and / or additional needs identified during recent curriculum reform processes.

Recommendations 16 and 17 of the Inclusion Review focused specifically on IEPs. They recommended that guidelines identifying essential components of IEPs be established for the development of IEPs for students with disabilities. Further, they recommended that student learning outcomes detailed in IEPs use existing curriculum documents and that there be statewide consistency in the development of IEPs according to the guidelines.

The Guidelines were developed through a comprehensive statewide consultation and involved trialing the model through support services prior to becoming available in draft form in May 2005. Broad trialing took place in the remainder of 2005, leading to their finalisation after the 2005 school year. Comments about the Guidelines' workability informed the final draft.

While issues in educating students with a disability were an impetus for development of individual education planning guidelines, the framework has broader applicability. The Guidelines provide a tool to support educational provision for any student who may have identified personalised learning needs. In this light, the Guidelines can be used to inform teaching and learning for a broad range of students.

Since appearing in draft, the Guidelines have been further adapted with illustrative examples based upon students with disabilities and also students whose particular learning needs arise from high ability. Through these examples, it can be seen that the IEP model provides a powerful framework to support teachers in personalising learning programs for any student.

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