MissingSchool is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to raising awareness of the educational issues facing children who miss school because of critical or chronic illness. They recognise that illness and treatment can cause significant school absence for kids and their objective is to keep seriously ill kids connected.
MissingSchool has been working closely with The Hospital School Westmead, to place robots in the schools of our students. Keeping them connected to their school and their learning.
If you are interested in engaging with this service, please contact us for more information.
Eligible ward students are introduced to the idea of telepresence robots by one of our teachers. We support families in their application to MissingSchool to have one placed in their child's census school classroom.
See-Be The Robot Service
MissingSchool has been running See-Be The Robot Service, since 2017, with support from St.George Foundation. They place telepresence robots in willing schools to demonstrate that continuous two-way connection is possible between seriously sick children and their classrooms when they are absent, missing school.
Robots live in the regular classrooms of students, are operated and moved in real-time by the student on their device from the remote location (home or hospital). They feel empowered with their independence, can see their teachers, receive the same instruction as their peers, move around/between classrooms if allowed, socialise with friends, and participate in as much of the school day as possible with their classmates.
The pilot began in the ACT and now operates across Australia. Participating schools, hospital schools and hospitals are among some of the first in the world to be implementing this solution for this purpose at a systems level. See-Be The Robot Service positions Australia as a world-leader in education and paediatric health setting innovations in this context, and in meeting children’s rights and wellbeing in education and healthcare.
See-Be Robots poster- Who, what, when, where, why, how?
To view the program and see it in action, refer to: MissingSchool website.