Keeping students educated during and after a chronic illness
UNSW cancer specialists and psychologists suggest Australia is lagging behind the US and Europe in providing consistent services to help childhood cancer survivors successfully reintegrate into their schools.
“When they get better, these kids want to go back to the same classes with their mates. But because of missed school due to the illness we often see them struggle with work and fall behind, which can cause them to act out and develop low self-esteem which follows them for the rest of their scholastic career,” says Prof Glenn Marshall, Head of Translational Research at Children’s Cancer Institute UNSW, and a senior oncologist in the Kids Cancer Centre at the Sydney Children’s Hospital.
Fixing the problem will require government funding and better systems of communication between healthcare systems and education departments, Marshall says.
“In an ideal world, we would like to see each child have an individualised learning plan that accommodates them for the duration of their time away from the classroom.”
Marshall is the senior author of a report recently published in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, which suggests teachers in Australia are uncertain about their role in supporting students with chronic illnesses; schools inconsistently provide learning support for home and hospital study; and current communication frameworks between hospitals, parents and schools are inadequate.
The paper makes four recommendations:
- improve the implementation policies around current legislation
- establish better hospital-to-school communication structures
- improve teacher knowledge of the educational implications of childhood cancers
- provide nationwide homebound learning support
Each year, 500-600 school-aged children are diagnosed with cancer in Australia. While cure rates are now higher than 80%, the educational impacts of childhood cancer are still significant and diverse.
They include missing time from school for treatment and side-effects such as poor concentration and attention, fatigue, social isolation, and mobility difficulties.
When children return to school, they require targeted support services to prevent longer-term consequences, such as failing grades, deteriorating mental health, and/or dropping out of school.
These services are particularly important for facilitating communication between the hospital, home and school, and help keep teachers informed about the child’s condition, their progress, and any special educational needs they might have.
UNSW experts say the communication needs to begin earlier, with statutory guidelines at the federal level.
“At the moment, there’s no clear understanding about whose responsibility this is: the healthcare system or the education system,” says Barb Donnan, an educational psychologist at UNSW Medicine.