School Students with Chronic Illness Have Unmet Academic, Social, and Emotional School Needs

Students with chronic illness generally have higher school needs than their healthy peers. The research to date examining school support for these needs has been limited to qualitative methods. We collected quantitative data to compare the school needs and supports received by 192 students with chronic illness and 208 students without chronic illness using parent-completed surveys. We assessed school experiences and receipt of school support across academic, social-emotional, and medical domains and school attendance. We analyzed the data using logistic regression. Students with chronic illness were 3.8 times more likely to have repeated a grade, 3.6 times more likely to have parent-reported academic challenges, and 4.9 times more likely to have recent illness-related school absenteeism than healthy students. Parents of students with chronic illness were 2.2 times more likely to report their child to have moderate-high emotional distress, and 4.6 times more likely to report that their child had low social confidence compared with parents of healthy students. Students with chronic illness did not receive more school-based tutoring, home-based tutoring, or support from a teacher's aide or school psychologist than healthy students. Students with chronic illness receive insufficient support to address their academic and social-emotional needs or high rates of school absenteeism. Evidence-based educational services must be developed and delivered to meet the needs of students with chronic illness at school and while recovering at home.