Epilepsy in the classroom

Some pupils with epilepsy will not need any more support that any other child in your class. But some pupils will not. We hope this information will help you to meet the needs of these children and young people.

Safety

If your student falls down during a seizure, you may need to think about how to protect them from injury. Using padding for sharp corners and hard surfaces could help. So could leaving extra space around their desk.

Some students may need extra safety consideration in some lessons, such as cookery, science or games. These would include students who have seizures with a loss or change in awareness. Each student’s seizures will need an individual assessment.

Learning and behaviour

Children and young people all learn at their own pace: some are high achievers, and some struggle. This is the same for students with epilepsy, particularly if they have learning difficulties. Some students with epilepsy may also have behaviour problems. Learning and behaviour problems can be caused by:

• damage to the brain
• frequent or long seizures
• side-effects from epilepsy medicines
• seizures that are happening in the brain, but show no outward sign. This is called sub-clinical epileptic activity
• problems in other areas of their lives.

An educational psychologist might be able to help your student with learning or behaviour problems.

Memory

There are many reasons why students with epilepsy have memory problems. It may be because they are having frequent seizures. Or it may be because their epilepsy medicine is slowing down their thought processes. Some students will have damage to the memory part of their brains. An educational psychologist can assess a child’s memory function, and offer ways to help them. Epilepsy Action also has hints for helping with memory problems.

Stress

Learning and taking exams can be stressful. And learning apart, school can be a stressful place to be. Some young people with epilepsy find that  stress can trigger their seizures. And worrying about having a seizure can be stressful. If you think your student is finding school stressful, there may be ways you can help them. For example, they may not know that they could be given extra support around exam times.

Exams

Some students with epilepsy may need extra support around exam time.

The Equality Laws

If you live in the UK and have epilepsy, it is illegal to discriminate against you, because of your epilepsy. The Equality Act (EA) covers people in England, Scotland and Wales. The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) covers people in Northern Ireland.
Your students with epilepsy are protected by these laws. This means that you can’t treat them less favourably than other students in school. Out of school activities are also covered. It also means that you may need to make reasonable adjustments for them. Reasonable adjustment may mean providing an LCD or TFT computer for a student with photosensitive epilepsy. Or it could mean providing lesson notes for a student with frequent absence seizures.