This article investigates why young people with significant and continuing health conditions can easily be overlooked in education. The Keeping Connected study from Australia revealed much about the complicated lives of young people with chronic illness, and several unanticipated ways that health conditions impacted on education are reported here. However, the effect of global education policy also provides some indication that there is a broader explanation that might explain exclusionary practices. The argument that social inclusion policy bears little relation to either social justice or inclusive education is developed. Informed by what young people and their parents reported in this study and by identification of policy conveniences and silences, this article offers some explanation for how the interests of this invisible cohort of young people are not well served. In light of this, it is appropriate to ask whether current understandings of inclusion could be problematised and further developed so that the entitlement of these young people to accommodation and success in education is more generally acknowledged.