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More than a million Australian school children risk being left behind at school, because they are missing from the classroom with long periods of illness and chronic pain.
Campaigners addressing this simmering issue, claim it's resolvable if policy was put in place to combine educational and health approaches.
Missing School is a nationwide NGO that was started twelve years ago by parents of children who’d been at risk of disconnecting from education because of poor health and related absenteeism.
It's CEO Megan Gilmour, recently became the 2025 ACT Australian of the Year. She told Powerd Media it's time for action.
We're in the midst of a school attendance crisis with vast numbers of students not attending school for various health and mental health situations.
Ms Gilmour states that Australia doesn’t have an evidence-based approach to school connection for students who are missing school in a health crisis. She explains her organisation compiled a report in 2015 to find out why.
“We did our Australian First report and found it is the role of our schools and our education systems to make this happen.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, it was expected that school would continue online. However once the global health crisis was over, so was distance learning.
The Act Australian of the Year says it shouldn’t make a difference.
We already have the regulation through the disability standards for education to provide assistive technology for access to the classroom. We have the technology in schools already through Zoom and Teams and screens.
Photo: Megan Gilmour (provided).
Ms Gilmour says clearer policy is needed. She is pleading with politicians to recognise chronically ill and absent students as “a priority equity cohort in our education system,” and don’t miss out on”funding that goes into schools.”
“This issue is a sleeping giant in our education systems, that it is holding the whole education system back.”
The advocate says she sees a time when every school in Australia could become a flexible centre of learning.
“Students can learn across schools or in them and be able to physically attend as well as have that connection maintained if they physically can't attend,” Ms Gilmour says.
“It's one of the most wonderful things to witness when you see a student who has been separated from their peers and their school community due to a complex or long lasting medical condition, which brings with it mental health issues and anxiety, be reconnected."