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.