Epilepsy awareness in UK education

Survey for National Epilepsy Week 2006

Findings

• Overall, 27 per cent of schools were not aware or didn’t know how many of their pupils had epilepsy. However, there was a marked difference between primary and secondary schools, with primary schools reporting 52 per cent, while secondary schools reported 12 per cent.
• Sixty five per cent of primary schools and 32 per cent of secondary schools felt that epilepsy could greatly affect a pupil’s educational performance.
• Overall, 74 per cent of schools felt that having epilepsy could affect a pupil’s relationship with other pupils to some extent.
• Only 19 per cent of all schools felt that their staff’s level of epilepsy awareness and knowledge was good, with 13 per cent reporting that it was poor or very poor. It was found that perceived levels of staff awareness were slightly higher in primary schools.
• Twenty six per cent of schools reported that none of their staff had received any epilepsy awareness training and 16 per cent didn’t know if any training had taken place.
• Seventy four per cent of schools recognised that all members of staff would benefit from learning more about epilepsy. However, nine per cent felt that this would be of no benefit to their staff.
• When asked to select which resources they felt would be most effective in raising staff awareness, schools rated these in the following order: information pack, in school training and web based resources.
• When asked to select which resources they felt would be most effective in raising pupil awareness, schools rated these in the following order: information pack, lesson plan and web based resources. A number of primary schools commented that epilepsy awareness could be delivered via school assemblies, while secondary schools felt the place for this would be within personal, social and health education (PSHE) lessons.
• Seventy eight per cent of responding schools requested an education information pack.

Margaret Rawnsley
March 2006