Teachers should be given proper and clear guidelines on how to deal with children with HIV, teaching unions and the National Aids Trust have told the government.

This was said after it was revealed that some schools are discriminating against children who are HIV positive, a phenomenon that is steadily growing, the Guardian reports.

Two recent cases of such discrimination have been reported in Leeds and Scotland, according to the newspaper, adding to six cases where children were excluded earlier in the year as reported by the Observer.

"We’ve heard of children being refused places at school, and children being excluded from school when people found out they were HIV positive," Deborah Jack, the National Aids Trust’s chief executive said.

"We’ve even had one case where a child actually found out they were HIV positive from a teacher, when their parents and doctor had decided it would be better to wait until they were older."

A Disability Discrimination Act introduced by the government in 2005 made discrimination against adults or children with HIV illegal.