At the age of four or five your child will start going to school. This is initially an unsettling experience for a lot of children, but most soon settle in, make friends, and enjoy the stimulation that school provides.

Hospital appointments and illness may mean that your child has more frequent absences from school, which means they can miss out on lessons. You don’t have to mention HIV when you provide an explanation to the school. However, regular or lengthy absences can have an impact on your child’s learning. If children are doing well on treatment, they only need to have about four visits to the clinic per year and at least half of them can be in the holidays, so children really do not need to miss much time from school.

Some research has shown that the children of HIV-positive mothers have slower educational development than other children. There are likely to be a number of reasons for this. Support from a child psychologist and specialist educational support workers may be helpful and can be accessed through your child’s HIV clinic or school. If discussing this with the school, you don’t have to mention HIV.

It’s good to know that schools are not allowed to discriminate against children because they have HIV.