Time Off School for Operation

[pilates]

My daughter is due an operation in the foreseeable future where she will need to have several weeks off school. I just wondered if anyone knew where I stand with regards to schooling. Do the school have a duty to make sure she catches up the work she misses or is up to me to make sure she catches up?

Once she has been off for something like 3 weeks they have to call in the Hospital teaching service (or some similar name). Talk to the school about it now.

BUT it really doesn't matter if she misses school at the primary stage. It is much more important that she gets well. Forget about school until she is bored, and then just make sure she reads or does a few sums or writes a diary.

Don't worry, lots of people miss periods of schooling, and it is quite easy to recover (unless there are already SEN issues).
I hope everything goes well for her.

How old is your daughter? That will impact how catch up is covered. If she is younger the teachers will just be aware next time that topic is covered (e.g. telling the time) that she missed their last input and will make sure she gets a bit of backup. In literacy and numeracy the areas of teaching get revisited and skills are constantly reinforced and updated. But if she misses a whole unit (e.g. history unit on the Romans)then that isn't covered again and bit of background reading with you at home might be a good idea. Outside literacyand numeracy if a unit of work takes 4+ hours to teach the class there isn't really any leeway for teachers to cover it all 1 to 1 with her when she returns to school.
Most schools do not expect children to do school work if they are off sick. They might provide a few worksheets, but without the background teaching their value is limited. Ours are happy to send home several reading books if a parent asks for them.

Hope that helps and that the operation goes smoothly.
Good luck
Abi

A friend of dd just had about 5 weeks off school due to operation and the school gave her some schoolwork to complete during her period of recovery. I would suggest you speak to the school as I am sure they come across this regularly.

Thank you, she will be in Y6 when she has the operation. She struggles with maths and that is my main concern.

Speak to the ward as well - most if not all will have teachers attached as well as play therapists (to keep the older ones entertained as well as the littlies!) When I worked in a Children's hospital it certainly wasn't unusual to have "homework" either set by school and supervised by the ward teacher or set by them (depended on the school I think). Don't push too much though, she'll need time to recover too, and her attention span will likely be a lot shorter than usual for a while.

I always used to ask them how the school stuff was going on the ward round (although nearly had to rethink when one 9 yo asked for help with his history homework (on the 1980s - felt very old that day!)