Organizational Supports for ADHD Students

As a result of the behaviors listed above, students with ADHD are at greater risk of academic difficulties, social/emotional issues, and limited educational outcomes. The degree to which attention impacts a student’s academic and social performance is related to the interactions between the student’s academic and behavioral needs and the environmental demands. Therefore, it is not unusual for the student to perform differently across settings. For example, a student with ADHD may experience academic success in elementary school; however, when he enters middle school, the increased academic and organizational demands may increase his need for additional academic and behavioral supports.

Educational success, also referred to as student and academic achievement, pertains to the extent to which educational objectives are met, such as the acquisition of knowledge and skills by students. For practical purposes, it is often primarily measured in terms of official exam scores, but numerous additional indicators exist, including attendance rates, graduation rates, dropout rates, student attitudes, and post-school indicators such as later income and incarceration rates.[100] Several factors influence educational achievement, such as psychological factors related to the individual student, and sociological factors associated with the student's social environment. Additional factors encompass access to educational technology, teacher quality, and parental involvement. Many of these factors overlap and mutually influence each other.

In most countries school education is predominantly financed and provided by governments. Public funding and provision also plays a major role in higher education. Although there is wide agreement on the principle that education, at least at school level, should be financed mainly by governments, there is considerable debate over the desirable extent of public provision of education. Supporters of public education argue that universal public provision promotes equality of opportunity and social cohesion. Opponents of public provision advocate alternatives such as vouchers.

Compared to other areas of basic education, globally comparable data on pre-primary education financing remain scarce. While much of existing non-formal and private programmes may not be fully accounted for, it can be deduced from the level of provision that pre-primary financing remains inadequate, especially when considered against expected benefits. Globally, pre-primary education accounts for the lowest proportion of the total public expenditure on education, in spite of the much-documented positive impact of quality early childhood care and education on later learning and other social outcomes

The states and territories are responsible for providing funding for government subsidised delivery in their jurisdiction and the Commonwealth Government, through the Australian Quality Skills Authority, provides regulation of registered training organisations except in Victoria and Western Australia. A central concept of the VET system is "national recognition", whereby the assessments and awards of any one registered training organisation must be recognised by all others, and the decisions of any VET regulatory authority must be recognised by the all states and territories. This allows national portability of qualifications and units of competency.

Questions about the just distribution of educational opportunity are especially vexing given the scarcity of resources allocated to education. Although developed societies provide some education for free to their citizens, funding for education is always in competition with the need to provide citizens with other social goods. As Amy Gutmann writes: “The price of using education to maximize the life chances of children would be to forego these other social goods” (Gutmann 1999: 129). Other basic welfare needs (e.g., housing, healthcare, food), as well as cultural goods (e.g., museums, parks, concert halls), must be weighed against public funds allocated to education, thereby making high-quality education—even in highly productive societies—scarce to some degree.