What the NCCD actually is
The Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD) is an annual, national data collection that every Australian school takes part in. Once a year, on the first Friday of August (census day), schools record which students received adjustments due to disability over the preceding period, and at what level. It is not a diagnosis, and it is not itself a funding application, though the data does feed into how Commonwealth disability funding is calculated for each school.
Who is actually eligible
A student is included in the NCCD when two things are both true:
- They have a diagnosed or imputed disability that meets the definition in the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth)
- They have received reasonable adjustments for at least 10 weeks within the 12 months before census day
For most levels, those 10 weeks do not need to be one unbroken block. They can happen across separate weeks, or even across more than one school. The exception is Extensive, covered below.
The principle underneath everything
Adjustments have to be responding to the functional impact of a disability specifically, not academic gaps on their own, not behaviour, not attendance, and not circumstances at home. That single test is often the clearest way to check whether something belongs in the NCCD at all.
The four levels
| Level | What it generally looks like |
|---|---|
| QDTP | Minor adjustments made within everyday quality teaching, without a formal, individualised plan. |
| Supplementary | Additional support beyond quality teaching, usually working from an established plan, extra time, adjusted materials, and similar. |
| Substantial | Significant, ongoing, planned adjustments, often with specialist input and a modified curriculum. |
| Extensive | Highly intensive, individualised support required at all or nearly all times, typically multiple specialists working from a documented plan. |
A fifth option, None, is not an official NCCD level, it is simply the default for a student not currently receiving recognised adjustments.
What changed for 2026: Extensive is stricter
Under the NCCD Guidelines: Effective 2026 Onward, Extensive now specifically requires 10 consecutive weeks of support provided at all times, with only limited exceptions. This is different from the other three levels, where non-consecutive weeks are generally fine. If a student's Extensive support has genuine gaps, it is worth checking that evidence still meets this tightened bar.
Why the level you choose matters
The level recorded feeds into the Schooling Resource Standard funding loading for that student, and it is the figure a school points to when demonstrating it is meeting its obligations under the Disability Standards for Education 2005. Getting it right, and being able to show why, matters well beyond a single census day.
Where BrainBase fits
Most study tools that mention NCCD stop at this four-level model applied once, school-wide, to a student. BrainBase treats the level as something that can genuinely differ by subject, since that is closer to how support actually works in practice. There is a full guide to that specifically below.