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Professionals · code 2352

Special needs teachers

Special needs teachers teach physically or mentally handicapped children, young persons or adults, or those with learning difficulties or other special needs. They promote the social, emotional, intellectual and physical development of their students. Tasks include - (a) assessing students’ abilities and limitations with regard to intellectual, physical, social and emotional impairments, exceptional intellectual gifts, or other special situations; (b) designing or modifying curricula and preparing and delivering programmes, lessons and activities adapted to students’ abilities and needs; (c) giving instruction on an individual or group basis using special techniques or aids appropriate to students’ needs; (d) employing special educational strategies and techniques during instruction to improve the development of sensory- and perceptual-motor skills, language, cognition and memory; (e) establishing and enforcing rules for behaviour and policies and procedures to maintain order among students; (f) teaching academic subjects and practical and self-help skills to students with hearing, sight and other impairments; (g) stimulating and developing students’ confidence, interests, abilities, manual skills and coordination; (h) conferring with other staff members to plan and schedule lessons for special needs students; (i) preparing and maintaining student data and other records and submitting reports; (j) administering various forms of assessment and evaluating progress of each student; (k) conferring with students, parents, head teachers and other relevant professionals involved in the students’ care to develop individual educational plans designed to promote students’ development. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Learning disabilities special education teacher - Learning support teacher - Remedial teacher - Teacher of gifted children - Teacher of the hearing impaired - Teacher of the sight impaired Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Vocational education teacher - 2320 - Secondary school teacher - 2330 - Primary school teacher - 2341

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 229 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • teacher of talented and gifted students
  • special educational needs teacher

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

71.6
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 28.4 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 28.4 = 71.6

That's the whole sum, and you can check it against the ILO's study.

33.5
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 6 US jobs

17
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 18.4 · hand skill 18.8 · cramped spaces 13.8 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on under 50 Less than half hands-on

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.7-work-setting measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

What this number leaves out This job rates 33.5 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

The tasks behind the score

The score is the average of these. A job is really a bundle of tasks, and an average can hide how uneven that bundle is.

The task AI could do most of scores 56.5, while the average is 28.4. A big gap means some of this job is wide open to AI and some of it barely at all. That's quite different from a job where everything sits somewhere in the middle, even when the averages match.

  1. 56.5

    Preparing and maintaining student data and other records and submitting reports

    Medium
  2. 33.5

    Administering various forms of assessment and evaluating progress of each student

    Low
  3. 31.5

    Designing or modifying curricula and preparing and delivering programmes, lessons and activities adapted to students’ abilities and needs

    Low
  4. 26.3

    Assessing students' abilities and limitations with regard to intellectual, physical, social and emotional impairments, exceptional intellectual gifts, or other specific problems

    Low
  5. 25.5

    Establishing and enforcing rules for behaviour and policies and procedures to maintain order among students

    Low
  6. 25

    Conferring with students, parents, head teacher and other relevant professionals involved in the students’ care to develop individual educational plans designed to promote students' development.

    Low
  7. 24.5

    Employing special educational strategies and techniques during instruction to improve the development of sensory- and perceptual-motor skills, language, cognition, and memory

    Very Low
  8. 24

    Conferring with other staff members to plan and schedule lessons for special needs students

    Very Low
  9. 23.5

    Giving instruction on an individual or group basis using special techniques or aids appropriate to students’ needs

    Very Low
  10. 23

    Stimulating and developing students’ confidence interests, abilities, manual skills and coordination

    Very Low
  11. 18.8

    Teaching academic subjects and practical and self-help skills to students with hearing, sight and other impairments

    Very Low

11 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.7-work-setting

Helped, or replaced?

The score above can't tell a tool that makes you faster from one that does the task instead of you. Jobs and Skills Australia looked at those two things separately, and this is their result, matched to this job.

One Australian job matches, but only partly: not everyone in it does this job. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

AI helps you
71
AI does it for you
36

Helping wins by 35 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 2415

Compared with similar jobs

There are 92 jobs in the “Professionals” group, averaging 61.2. This one is above that.