Paul Fisher finds professionals worried that the education of children in some hospitals is in need of intensive care. The main NAESC recommendations covering education for children in hospital are as follows:
* Equal access and entitlement to a good education; * Recognised, comparable standards in every part of the country; * Teaching for all children who are in hospital, or likely to be, for five days or recurrently; * Teaching should start as soon as the medical condition allows; * Hospital-based teaching at every hospital regularly admitting children; * Routine notification of hospital teachers when adolescents are assigned to adult wards; * Small LEAs should consider combining to provide education for sick children; * Home tuition for at least five hours a week for sick children out of school for more than four weeks; * Combined provision of hospital teaching and home tuition.
As a mainstream teacher, do you have experience of taking sick children back into the normal classes? Are these children ever bullied? Do they have difficulties resuming school work? What might make things easier? Please contact Kirsteen Tait, whose NAESC address is given above.
