From theyworkforyou.com click in the article for the full debate.
Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow, Labour) Link to this | Hansard source
I am not entirely sure I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. I can see that there may well be differences in the incidence of a particular condition. HIV is an obvious example. In London particularly, there is a relatively high incidence, but there are rural areas where the incidence is extremely low, so it is much more likely that a school in London might have to deal with a child who has HIVthan a school in, say, rural Devon. That does not mean that that could not happen in rural Devon. It is not rocket science to draw up some fairly simple, clear guidelines about how a school ought to approach the issue.
Let me give some examples of what can happen to children. A child attending a nursery school attached to a primary school in Middlesex was due to start in the reception class in September, and the child's mother asked the head teacher if the school had any policy on informing parents in the event of, say, an outbreak of chickenpox. The head teacher asked why, and the mother explained that her daughter had an auto-immune problem, HIV. That information was then spread around the school and the head teacher told the mother that all the teachers had concerns about teaching her child, and that the dinner ladies would have to be told in case the child had an accident. The mother tried to explain that no one was at risk simply by being in the same room as her child, and eventually the head teacher said, "Look, you really ought to take the child to another school, and don't tell them that your daughter has HIV. Just enrol her without telling them." That is a perfect example of a complete lack of understanding. We are not asking the school to be able to treat someone with HIV; we are asking it to have some understanding about what it means.
Another case concerned a child transferring from a primary to a secondary school just last year. The primary school knew about the child's HIV status and passed that information on to the secondary schools without asking for the parents' consent, and the secondary schools then said that they wanted to inform all sorts of people in the school about the child's status.
Those are the sorts of things that can happen when people within a school are not aware of how they should deal with a child with HIV. That is one specific condition, but I could quote a range of examples. I do not suggest that such problems arise in every school, but they do arise, and too frequently. If there was training, if there was some understanding, if there was a policy within schools of just how a child with such a condition should be dealt with, we would avoid these problems. That is where I see the value in the Bill. Yes, I understand the resource implications and that we might have to think through carefully how we bring in some of the provisions, what conditions are covered, and whether the condition would require a school nurse to be available before the school could be expected to deal with the problem.
PDF version
