Generally, students with a disability have lower levels of educational achievement than those without a disability, but this varies significantly between different disability groups.

 Ball (2005) analysed the demographic and institutional factors that influenced the likelihood of completing an apprenticeship or traineeship for commencements in 1998−99 and found that the probability of completion for a student with a disability was 42% compared with 46% for those with no reported disability.

More recent work by Karmel & Nguyen (2008) shows that, for some types of disability, completion rates were affected more by other student characteristics (most notably prior education) than by the disability itself.