Hospital Schools SA give ongoing comprehensive education to patients at three hospital settings in Adelaide metro area
The setting, by Broadfeather Design, for the school for patients at the Women's and Children's Hospital in North Adelaide as part of Hospital Schools SA.
Images courtesy Women's and Children's Hospital
Hospital Schools SA, a partnership between the South Australian government education department and three Adelaide metropolitan hospitals for young inpatients and outpatients.
The Lyell McEwin Hospital at Elizabeth in Adelaide’s northern suburbs, was the third hospital school for South Australia from 2021. The other schools already operating were at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital at North Adelaide and Flinders Medical Centre in the southern suburbs. A school had operated within the Women’s and Children’s Hospital (formerly Adelaide Children’s Hospital) since 1930.
Hospital Schools SA provided educational programmes by focusing on personalised learning through targeted teaching for students and young people from public and private schools. Inpatients had access to continued learning in the classrooms on the ground floor as well as ward teaching through the hospital. Schooling could be negotiated for outpatients unable to attend their own school and also for school-aged siblings of country/interstate patients.
Hospital Schools SA delivered the early years learning framework, Australian curriculum and South Australian Certificate of Education in a classroom setting and via teaching on the wards and online for all years: preschool; junior primary: Reception to Year 4; middle school: years 5 to 9; senior school: years 10 to 12. It worked with individual schools and other educational institutions to ensure continuity in students' learning.
The NALHN (North Adelaide Local Health Network) school at Lyell McEwin Hospital would be available to inpatients and the siblings of patients from rural and remote areas. It also was the first hospital school in the state to educate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children as young as three.
