The Australia-first National Insights for Education Directories (NIEDs) serves as a groundbreaking one-stop digital hub.

Here, Here! Raise your hand to celebrate Australia’s most important roll call, keeping vulnerable kids connected to school from hospital or home.

NIEDs is designed to empower parents, carers and teachers with trustworthy just-in-time linkages, information, and resources – all pooled through an advocacy alliance of organisations focused on supporting children and young people with complex health challenges.

MissingSchool envisions the advocacy alliance activated through NIEDs will be a stepping stone to national cross-referral, promotion, and sharing of organisations’ content, resources, and services to bolster learning, social connection, and wellbeing at school.

NIEDs will unlock unique data, covering everything from teacher and parent insights to education system information contained in easily searchable digital directories of:

• 500+ medical, health, mental health, and support service organisations
• Australia’s public, independent, and faith-based schools; and
• Over 4,000 qualitative quotes and insights from parents and teachers

Ongoing conversations with education and health professionals, organisations, and families themselves, will complement NIEDs as the advocacy alliance activates in-depth weekly webcasts exploring experiences, evidence, and examples at the frontline of caring for students living with complex health challenges.

MissingSchool CEO and Co-Founder Megan Gilmour says:

“NIEDs is a gamechanger at the intersection of health and education putting reliable and actionable information in the hands of the widest support team for students facing complex health challenges. The goal is to prioritise the learning and wellbeing journeys of these students alongside their peers by supporting their families and teachers at the point of pressing need. Knowledge is indeed power… and so is presence. All children should have equality of opportunity in education. All children should be seen and heard.”

Did you know?

In 2022, the Commonwealth Government accepted MissingSchool’s policy recommendation to introduce a dedicated “health condition” absence code for use in Australian schools. This followed MissingSchool’s identification of a blind spot, in which schools fail to consistently connect illness with the Disability Standards for Education in order to trigger action and support for students who are absent often or for long periods. Until this change is implemented, the coding of “authorised absence” for every health circumstance—from a common cold upwards—automatically suspends school support for students with complex medical or mental health conditions during their absence, while enrolment continues. A specific code will enable early detection and monitoring of chronic school absences for these students, will trigger options for school support, and enhance the national evidence base through improved data. No different to universal provision of wheelchair access ramps, schools are obliged by the Disability Standards for Education to ensure children who can’t attend school due to complex medical or mental health conditions can continuously access their classes through assistive devices, connect with curriculum through their teachers, learn alongside peers and receive specialised support, from hospital or home.

On World Teachers’ Day (27 October, 2023), HeartKids joins with us to launch MissingSchool’s Australia-first National Insights for Education Directories (NIEDs)  You can join us, too!