Talking to children about death

This short paper considers a response to requests from schools to help them when working with children who have been bereaved. It sets out a consideration of a more systematic way of providing teachers with a context in which they might address questions about death and how they might do so in a way that considers death as an event in which we are all involved and not one needing specialist intervention. The method outlined suggests that death can be incorporated across the British school curriculum into every subject already being taught and does not need to be either a specialist area, part of religious education or to be left to personal, social and health education. A small survey with children is included to illustrate children's own attitudes towards teaching death in schools.