Research verifies that there is no safe threshold for absence and missing more than 10 school days per semester increases the likelihood of negative effects on education outcomes. Without school connection, your child’s academic achievement may be hindered, relationships with their peers and teachers disrupted, and isolation from their school community can affect their mental health and wellbeing. School absence increases the risk of student anxiety, disengaging from school and learning, with long-term consequences that may persist into adulthood. Sick kids get lonely and miss their friends and learning – and most want the normality that school life offers, especially when they can’t be there in person.
Having your child’s school maintain connection can keep your child up-to-date socially and academically, help to normalise a critical period in their life, and give them a chance to be “just kids” rather than patients. The potential positive benefits of school connection for your child include improving mental health outcomes, addressing school anxiety, improving educational engagement and attainment, and reducing social isolation. Benefits can extend to keeping peer relationships, and support families by reducing management fatigue.
Schools can help by: collaborating with healthcare services; early intervention and planning with parents; integrated and consistent provision of education across home, school and medical settings; individualised, formalised and actionable agreements and adjustments documenting support for your child; measures addressing your child’s social and emotional needs and anxiety in the classroom; and continuous connection between your child, their teachers and peers through real-time assistive telepresence during absences. With school support, students can learn from anywhere.
The Disability Standards for Education require your school to support your child with access to school facilities, assistive devices, accredited curriculum, and learning alongside their peers. The Standards do not limit equality to physical presence, and students who miss school with a serious illness or school anxiety still have a right to access their schools with the help of assistive devices (including technology) and receive ongoing support. Our robots work like access ramps to give sick and absent students an unmistakable presence in their schools so they can learn from anywhere.
While any type of telepresence technology allows students to learn from anywhere, unlike more static technologies (such as Zoom, Teams, or FaceTime, etc.), robots “teleport” in to your child’s classroom. From their remote location in hospital or at home, they can access their classroom. They can see and hear their teachers and classmates, be seen and heard, and move the robot around their classroom using their own device without the teacher’s intervention. The robot allows your child to participate in their lessons in real time, and be included in learning and shared social experiences (lunchtime, playground, assemblies, and ceremonies). As a proxy for physical presence and movement, the robot gives your child independence and can help to ease school anxiety.
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