School enrollment and school performance of epileptic children, Fath Alrahman Neuropediatric Refer Clinic, December-January 2017-2018

Introduction: Epilepsy in children is a great management challenges as it is accompanied with many learning and behavioral problems, which make them more susceptible to educational under achievement. Children with epilepsy are well known of having academic difficulties even when having normal intelligence Objective: To assess the school enrollment and performance of epileptic children and to identify the associated factors. Methodology: An analytic cross-sectional study design was used , structured questionnaire was used to interview parents of 85 epileptic children aged 6 – 18 , it was a total coverage including all who came in the period from 17th of December 2017 to the 17th of January 2018 recruiting them while they were in the waiting room, data were presented as number and percentage and different charts and tables were used , and the results were analyzed using chi-square test taking P<0.05 as the limit of significance, using SPSS version 25. Results: the 85 epileptic children were 51(60%) males and 34 females (40%), there are 28 children who were not attending the school, 10 children have never been enrolled in school mainly due to parental anxiety mainly. Two children were enrolled in schools for special needs. 26 children had repeated an academic year before mostly due to their disease symptoms and this tend to occur in younger children. All children were absent from school for at least one day in each month constantly due to medical follow up . One third of children who were attending ordinary school had good as their grade for the previous year. Conclusion and Recommendation: epileptic children are facing many academic difficulties that can be eliminated by educational programmes and campaigns targeting the epileptic children, their families, the schools and the community so as to enable them to achieve the maximum of their potentials