If your child has a disability and is struggling at school, you may be wondering whether NDIS funding can help. The short answer is: it depends on your child's plan and goals — but for many families, it's worth asking. This page explains what we know, what we don't know, and how Merit Tutoring works for children with a wide range of learning needs.
No lock-in contracts · From $29/week · Max 5 per class
Important: Merit Tutoring is not an NDIS registered provider.
Families using self-managed or plan-managed NDIS funding may be able to use it for educational supports — we recommend checking with your NDIS planner or support coordinator. Agency-managed participants would need to use a registered NDIS provider. We're happy to provide invoices and documentation that may support your NDIS claim.
This is one of the most common questions we hear from families, and the honest answer is: it depends — and in most cases, the answer is no. The NDIS does not fund general academic tuition. School education is primarily the responsibility of the education system, not the NDIS.
Where NDIS may fund something that looks like tutoring is where a support directly relates to a participant's disability — for example, building skills that a disability is making harder to develop. In those specific circumstances, it can sometimes be considered under broader Capacity Building categories, such as:
Whether any support can be covered always comes back to the participant's individual plan, the goals listed in it, and whether it is considered reasonable and necessary in their specific circumstances by the NDIA. Decisions are not consistent from plan to plan. Your NDIS planner, Local Area Coordinator, or support coordinator is the right person to ask — not us.
We can provide invoices and documentation that show what our sessions involve. Whether that is accepted as a valid use of funding is entirely a decision for you, your planner, and your plan or agency manager.
If your child's NDIS funding is self-managed, you have the most flexibility — you can use any provider, registered or not. Merit Tutoring is available to self-managed participants.
If your child is plan-managed, your plan manager pays providers on your behalf. Plan managers can pay non-registered providers like Merit, so this should be straightforward to organise. Contact us and we can provide the invoices your plan manager needs.
If your child is agency-managed (also called NDIA-managed), the NDIS pays providers directly — but only to NDIS registered providers. Merit Tutoring is not registered, so we cannot work with agency-managed participants under NDIS funding. In that case, you'd need to either find a registered provider or, if it's possible in your circumstances, switch the relevant support budget to self or plan management.
Merit Tutoring uses a gamified approach to maths and English that, in practice, tends to work well for children who've struggled in traditional classroom or tutoring settings. We're not a disability support service — we're tutors. But what we've found is that an engagement-first approach reduces the friction points that often make tutoring hard for children with ADHD, autism, learning difficulties, and other conditions.
Sessions run on Merit's custom-built platform — not Zoom. Your child sees their tutor, any classmates (groups are capped at 5), the whiteboard, and the learning activities all on one screen. The platform is built for learning, not adapted from a generic video call tool.
Every session is 60 minutes, live with a real tutor. The content is organised around Merit's Play. Build. Grow. methodology:
We want to be careful not to overclaim here. Not every approach works for every child, and we've had sessions that clicked straight away and sessions that took a few weeks to warm up. But here's what we've seen:
Engagement-first reduces anxiety. A lot of children with disabilities — particularly those with ADHD or autism — have had negative experiences with school or tutoring. The pressure to sit still, pay attention, and get things right quickly can cause real distress. When the session starts with a game rather than a worksheet, the dynamic shifts. Most children relax into it faster than you'd expect.
Immediate feedback is less frustrating than delayed correction. In games, you find out straight away whether your answer was right. There's no waiting for a marked sheet to come back. For children who struggle with uncertainty or who find delayed feedback hard to process, that immediacy helps.
Positive reinforcement is built in. Points, progress bars, completing activities — these create small wins throughout the session rather than one big result at the end. For children who've had lots of negative feedback about their learning, consistent small wins matter.
Visual learning is front and centre. Everything in a Merit session is visual. The games, the whiteboard, the activities — there's very little that depends solely on listening and retaining verbal instructions.
Online means home. Many children with disabilities find transitions and new environments genuinely difficult. Logging in from the kitchen table removes the stress of travelling to a tutoring centre, being in an unfamiliar space, and navigating the social experience of arriving somewhere new. Parents can also observe sessions — we encourage this, especially in the early weeks.
Merit's learning material is designed with children who learn differently in mind — including children with ADHD, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), dyslexia, dyscalculia, and broader learning difficulties. That doesn't mean we're a specialist disability service — we're tutors, not therapists or educational psychologists. But the session format is deliberately built around short activity cycles, immediate feedback, visual learning, and small groups, which tend to be easier to engage with than long worksheets and passive lectures.
Every child is different. Our free trial session is deliberately tailored — when you book, tell us about your child's needs and what's been hard before. We'll structure the trial around that rather than running a generic first session.
If you're at the planning or plan review stage and want to try to include educational tutoring support, there are a few things that tend to help:
We can't guarantee any of this will result in NDIS funding for tutoring — that decision is entirely with the NDIA and your planner. But we're happy to assist however we can with paperwork on our end.
Balloon Pop, Math Race, Word Hunt, Reading Race — games built for learning, not just bolted on. Academic content is inside the game itself.
Group sessions have a hard cap of 5 students. If your child needs more individual attention, 1-on-1 sessions are available from $59/week.
Sessions run from your kitchen table — no car trip, no unfamiliar environment, no sensory stress from travelling to a centre. Parent observation welcome.
We can provide invoices and session documentation to support your NDIS claim for self-managed and plan-managed participants.
Every tutor holds a current Working With Children Check. Sessions are conducted professionally on our custom-built platform.
Billed fortnightly. Cancel anytime. You're not locked into a term commitment — try it and see if it works for your child.
Tell us about your child's needs when you book — we'll tailor the free trial session to them, not run a generic first class.
"What truly sets Merit Tutoring apart is the range of activities they offer and their ability to bring out the best in each child. Their tailored approach has been life-changing for our son. The patience they demonstrate, their attention to detail, and the thoughtful preparation that goes into each session are exceptional."— Ivan Njul, Google Review
It depends on the individual's NDIS plan and goals. NDIS doesn't have a dedicated "tutoring" category, but educational support may be fundable under Capacity Building — specifically "Improved Daily Living" or "Increased Social and Community Participation" — if the support can be connected to disability-related goals and is considered reasonable and necessary. This is a grey area: outcomes aren't always consistent, so we recommend speaking directly with your NDIS planner or support coordinator.
NDIS does not fund general education — that's the responsibility of schools. However, NDIS may fund supports that build a participant's capacity to engage in education and daily life, particularly where the disability creates a barrier. Supports like social skills programs, learning strategy coaching, and educational tutoring framed around capacity building goals have been funded under some plans. Each plan is individual, so there's no universal answer.
No. Merit Tutoring is not an NDIS registered provider. Families using self-managed or plan-managed NDIS funding may be able to use Merit — self-managed participants can use any provider, and plan managers can pay non-registered providers. Agency-managed (NDIA-managed) participants need a registered provider, so Merit would not be available under NDIS funding for those families. We recommend checking with your NDIS planner or support coordinator before assuming Merit can be funded for your child.
At your planning meeting or plan review, focus on functional goals connected to your child's disability rather than academic outcomes. For example: building capacity to engage in independent learning tasks, developing on-task behaviour and concentration, or improving participation in group learning environments. Supporting documentation from school, a psychologist, or an occupational therapist can strengthen the case. Merit can provide invoices and session documentation to support your claim once your child is enrolled.
The free trial is a full 60-minute session tailored to your child's needs. No obligation, no lock-in. If it's not right for your child, we'll tell you that honestly.
Or call us: 0468 229 358
No lock-in contracts · From $29/week · Cancel anytime