To think perhaps schools should insist on vaccinations.

[Lovestonap]

Good animal boarding kennels etc will not take animals without their vaccinations up to date.
Should our schools be able to insist on a completed course of childhood vaccinations (up to age appropriate) before giving a space at a school? Obviously children who are unable to be vaccinated would have a medical exemption certificate. I think this would be a good idea, but then I'm wondering if this is a nanny state too far thing. Probably implications for human rights I haven't considered.

No. Schools have enough to do-their role is education not medical one. Who’s supposed to do this “checking up”?? Boarding kennels have to do it to insure their clients don’t get ill, which would have implications for their reputations and consequently their finances. What’s the incentive for schools? (I’m not actually looking for an answer to that, by the way, just trying to make you see why kennels fo it.) The English education system seems to be chaotic enough as it is-lack of teachers/teachers not lasting longer than 5yrs, etc. I’m not in England by the way, but am a teacher in another country, and I absolutely detest the amount of school time wasted in our country facilitating vision and screening tests, and vaccinations in Junior/Senior Infants, and even with it offered like that to parents, you’ll always have a few who don’t fill in the forms or actually refuse the screening. (Beats me what their thinking behind that is, but I suppose you can’t argue with stupidity.)
So, let your health dep sort out vaccinations and come up with a system to enforce them, and let your already overburdened schools get on with their job of teaching your children.

Obviously this is post-secondary, but when I started nursing school I had to get a complete work physical and I had to bring in my immunization records. If my immunizations weren't up to date, I wouldn't have been allowed to go to practicum. They keep track of these things.

Those blooming typos! Preview facility doesn’t work for some reason, and the phone screen is too small to re-read post. By the way, I didn’t mean to sound quite so aggressive (though it IS AIBU where anything goes, to a certain extent!) but I hate the way schools are increasingly being seen as one-stop Fix-All-The-Problems-In-Society Shops, or at least they are in Ireland, at any rate.)

YANBU

Obviously those children who cannot receive vaccinations would be exempt.

The whole point is heard immunity which would go towards protecting those that cannot receive it.

I believe that in Australia and the USA it is a requirement that a child has had all their immunisations before starting school.

In theory, I would welcome that policy here in the UK.

My DD is in an international school in Singapore. In order to secure her place we had to cisit a doctor and have them to some basic health checks and confirm her vaccinations were up to date in accordance with her country of origins schedule.

*visit

YANBU, should happen sooner rather than later.

I live in Canada, and in my city all parents are required to provide records of their children's immunizations to the Public Health Office. Once a year Public Health does a big check, and if a parent has failed to update their children's record, or if their child has not received a mandatory vaccination, the child is excluded from school until they get the necessary vaccination. It is an excellent system, and ensures that all children are immunized.

Immunization records must be provided when children first enrol in school too.

I agree that schools should be insisting on vaccinations. However, as a pp has mentioned, schools are already very stretched and I'm not sure how they'd enforce this in any meaningful way?

I suppose that you could get parents to sign something saying that they have vaccinated the children, and have some sort of consequence of they are found to be lying. Maybe a fine? Not sure how well any of this would work though. Also not sure how you'd know they were lying unless there was a disease outbreak, by which point it's a bit late and the damage has been done.

Definitely NBU. I wonder what the anti vaxxers would have to say about that though! Haha they'll be up in arms.

We are in Canada and I had to provide proof of immunisation for my DC to start school. They even had to get chickenpox vax despite having had chicken pox as we couldn't prove they have had it. I'm supportive of the system.

The state I live in at present in the US has this system, I think it is very sensible.

It is managed by having a medical form completed by the GP surgery that is then given to the school nurse. No form, no registration at school.

YANBU
I’m sure some private nurseries already do this

no, i don't. freedom to choose medical treatment shouldn't be dependent on a child getting an education. its highly unfair to the child to penalise them for a decision made by their parent also. we don't live in a nanny state and thank god for that. where does it go next?

Yabu. How is it helpful, for a child with uneducated anti-vaccine parents to be excluded from school.
Surely that just creates another uneducated anti-vaccine person.
Local govt has a duty of care to ensure each child gets an education, and something like that might increase those claiming to ‘home school’.

I’m also in the US and that’s what happens here. There’s a specific form that the doctor’s office provides that lists all vaccinations and has other health stuff like allergies on it too. My kids couldn’t go to daycare without that form. They insist on flu jabs too. I personally am perfectly happy with this system, and I guess if you don’t like it you can send your kids somewhere else.

Can anyone less lazy than me tell me, for the various jurisdictions that have already introduced this policy:

(a) the affect on vaccination rates;
(b) the affect on home-schooling rates.

we don't live in a nanny state that's how I do describe England to be honest.

YANBU OP. We've just returned to Aus and had to show dd1 has up-to-date vaccinations. The docs put it on a database that then allows us to receive child benefit and dd1 to attend school.

In Australia there is a growing number of children getting themselves vaccinated once they are of an age to see Dr independently of their parents (I think around 15). In today's litigious society I am surprised parents put other children at risk. If your child passed one of these diseases onto another child (eg an infant) who died as a result, do you think their parents may sue you? I certainly would.

I'm in Australia. Kids don't need to be vaccinated for school, but if they're not, certain government benefits are withheld (not that everyone is eligible for those). Childcare/kinder have different rules and some do exclude kids if they're not vaccinated.

I think it works well in Australia.

There’s very little burden on the childcare provider or school to require an immunisation certificate to be stapled to applications. It’s not the same as the faff of having the school nurse administer vaccinations or police it. No burden on the curriculum whatsoever.

The ‘choice’ for parents remains in tact. Vaccinate your kids, or ‘choose’ a hippy independent school 30km from where you live. One without ‘herd’ government funding. Neat.

It works well in Canada, as far as I know. Every year, we get asked to provide a proof of our DDs vaccines to make sure they're up to date. This year, it turned out we missed one thanks to our doctor's surgery and mixed schedules due to changing country and the county health center followed up with us and gave us time to get the jab before taking DD2 out of daycare.

We didn't have to have the chicken pox vaccine because both DDs have already had it. DD2 was a baby at time so my health visitor made a note of it in both records and that was enough.

There are some exemptions but I dont know anyone who bothers with them except for medical reasons. There have been no major scares in our local area and no chicken pox outbreaks in the daycare in the three years DD2 has been in or the school in the three years DD1 has been in (DD1's British nursery had four chicken pox outbreaks in a year!)

So to sum up YANBU OP.

It's a requirement here in Kuwait