Tygerberg Hospital School fills an academic void in the lives of children who are in hospital for extended periods. The school, which has been existing since 1959, consists of a primary school section and a high school section. It is located on the lower ground floor at Tygerberg Hospital. The school caters for approximately 45-50 learners daily, ranging from Grade R to Grade 12. These children suffer from illnesses such as cancer, heart, lung, kidney, liver and orthopaedic conditions.
Educators collect the children from the wards in the morning and accompany them (some in wheelchairs) to the school. They then return them to the wards after school. Children who are unable to leave their wards receive bedside education. Some children attend Tygerberg Hospital School for a few days to several months or even years.
The school also caters for learners who are well enough to go home but not to attend mainstream schools. Some children have been out of school for very long periods of time and are too old to join their grades. These children follow an Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) stream at the school.
Tygerberg Hospital School provides another important service for a particularly vulnerable and previous neglected group of children – a specialised unit for psychiatric patients called iThuba – established in 2004 to accommodate a maximum of 15 learners (up to Grade 12) with psychiatric illnesses. The ultimate objective is to enable the learners to resume their school careers with ease following discharge from hospital. Furthermore, the Tygerberg Hospital School caters for an additional 20 learners with Specific Barriers to Learning (Apraxia). Apraxia of speech is a specific speech disorder.
Volunteers enhance the overall learning experience by presenting a variety of additional activities such as kinetics, karate, art and reading sessions aimed at cultivating a love for reading. The objective is to enable learners to resume their school career with ease following discharge from hospital.
