Only 36.3% of deaf children in England have left secondary school having hit national GCSE benchmarks, according to the Department of Education (DfE) figures released today. This compares with 65.3% of their hearing classmates, highlighting a disturbing widening gap.
Alongside these results, a recent report issued by the National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) on behalf of the Consortium for Research in Deaf Education (CRIDE), shows that England’s local authorities have reported a continued drop in the numbers of qualified Teachers of the Deaf.
The NDCS report indicates the lowest ever number of qualified Teachers of the Deaf, which has dropped from 1,031 to 999 and shows the damaging erosion of vital specialist support which allows deaf children to thrive.
This is particularly concerning given that the numbers of deaf children in England identified by local authorities has risen to over 40,600 this year, up 7% from 2013.
The findings also suggest that the situation is only going to get worse for England’s deaf children, with over half of all Teachers of the Deaf due to retire in the next 10-15yrs.
Elayne Nunan’s 16 yr old daughter, Jodie suffers from moderate hearing loss in both ears and is preparing to sit her GCSE exams in June. Elayne is adamant that her daughter has never received the help she needs to do well and was turned down by the local authority when she applied for specialist support.
“Jodie has never received any kind of formal support with her education. Time and again I’ve raised concerns and begged for help, knowing how badly she was struggling and failing to keep up with her classmates and that when crunch time came she’d be falling off the edge of a cliff. Now that she is going to be faced with sitting her GCSE’s and is already bogged down with catch-up and revision, I’m not very hopeful about the grades she will get.
“If Jodie had received the extra help that I was fighting for, who knows what she could have achieved and where life could have taken her.”
Commenting on the recently released figures, Susan Daniels, CEO, at the National Deaf Children’s Society said;
“Deafness is not a learning disability so having a widening gap in GCSE attainment is simply unacceptable. The dwindling support from local authorities for qualified deaf teachers is resulting in deaf children being set up to fail and lagging behind throughout their education. It’s crucial that the Government takes action to clarify how local authorities will be properly held to account for failing deaf children.”
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MW
January 30, 2015
Reading this makes my heart breaks …..am lost for words…..
denissmith2
January 30, 2015
I am a deaf school governor so this topic is of real interest to me.
Several pupils at our school wear glasses – far more than wear hearing aids. This may be because glasses are a fashion accessory but it may also be due to the fact that it is easier to identify impaired vision as opposed to impaired hearing. There is also a different peer pressure that discourages both children and adults from wearing hearing aids.
So there could be several school pupils with hearing impairment who have not been assessed as deaf. There’s another question that bothers me. Would it be reasonable for a teacher to assume that a child wearing hearing aids can hear? I know that it shouldn’t be but how are they to know? Those that think they can hear have no understanding of the issues that confront the deaf – those that have hearing aids and those that don’t. That prompts another question. What can a teacher do to help the child who has a hearing impairment but hasn’t recognised the fact? Not a lot in my opinion.
Is there a definition that is used to define the term ‘deaf’ when used in a context such as this forum? It would be helpful if the word ‘deaf’ was qualified more often so that we can the reader can have a better understanding of the issues being discussed.
I will now go and try and find this DfE publication and I will post a link to it on here and elsewhere if I am successful.
Cathy
January 30, 2015
You have posed some interesting questions, dennissmith2. I remember wearing headphones at school, back in the 60s and teachers would pose a question directed at me, to see if I was listening!! Or they would say can you hear me, Cathy? I would be doodling on paper n shout back “yes!” so that is how teachers would know if deaf children are hearing them with their hearing aids or CIs. So it looks like teachers are not bothering to ask the children if they can hear them!?
With Cochlear implants now so popular Iam rather surprised that deaf children are still lagging behind, unless they dont have a CI. Even so, this poses another question: are CIs a real benefit to deaf children or just as useless as hearing aids ever were?! If the latter then should we not be asking ourselves if putting deaf children through a CI operation is really worthwhile, especially if they are still lagging behind educationally? Hearing sounds and noises with a CI is not good enough, they should be picking up peoples’ speech.
I have never forgotten my struggles at school, put at the side with back to the teacher, put in the middle so lipreading was far away. I spent my time dreaming n copying other children, I learnt absolutely nothing in primary school, then if you lagged behind you had to do the class all over again!!! So I stayed behind while my friends moved up!
“Deafness is not a learning disability” is true only in theory but most certainly not in practice. In real terms it is a massive learning disability when deaf children lag years behind their peers! I have spent half my adult life catching up with others, but many deaf children will never catch up and live “half a life” as a result!
If the new Education Secretary pulled her finger out and looked seriously at education she may just spot a serious learning gap between hearing children and deaf ones and start plugging the gap. However, Iam not holding my breathe when this lady is more interested in British Values that ask primary school children not how well they are doing in Maths and English but whether or not they know what a lesbian is?!? I truly despair for the next generation!!!!
Linda Richards
January 30, 2015
Would be interested to know what the statistics are for Scotland’s Deaf children?
Jack
January 30, 2015
@Linda
It probably isn’t possible to make a direct comparison to the situation in England given the different structures and benchmarks. Here are studies comparing Scottish Deaf children v All Scottish pupils in a similar way though:
http://www.blendedlearning.me/DASS/site/index.php
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/education/rke/centres-groups/creid/projects/postsch-trans-dhh/postsch-trans-dhh
QOBF
January 30, 2015
Does anyone know if there is a comparison with these young people today and those who went to Deaf school?
Heather Allen-Frost
January 31, 2015
A very interesting article! I am currently doing my dissertation on the experiences of deaf students in higher education. When looking for participants I was alarmed by the very small amount of deaf people studying in HE (even lower than i thought!). This type of information is very useful when considering barriers to HE! I am a deaf student myself but with my hearing aid’s haven’t had too many problems through school (I was very vocal about where I sat, what I could and could not hear etc) but I’m finding that my experience is very rare. If anyone has any information or articles on deaf students in HE, please share! Thank you!
Cathy
January 31, 2015
Heather, I did go to University, back in 1999, but I was the first profoundly deaf person they had ever had. I did struggle even though I had interpreter, the first one who would be off at the drop of a hat, leaving me stranded. He used to say he’d been to hospital when he hadn’t!!! 2nd interpreter was great, but then along came the black dog and I sunk!!! I completed 2.5yrs then had to pull out due to, what I discovered many years later was: tension headaches!!! I feel more support was required by tutors themselves, but this was sadly lacking……..
Hartmut
January 31, 2015
How does it compare to Dr Conrad’s reoirt in his book “The Deaf School Leavers” ?
Cathy
February 1, 2015
Hartmut, when was this book published and who by?
cat
February 1, 2015
In the case of single sided deafness there is evidence for learning disabilities related to it. The more serious kind with left ear deafness.
cat
February 1, 2015
Correction, the more serious kind (verbal intelligence) is with right ear deafness.
MW
February 1, 2015
It is getting to the level of The Big Bang Theory?
Cathy
February 2, 2015
Well cat, am not sure I understand u because am profoundly deaf in both ears but no learning difficulties!!
cat
February 3, 2015
That’s a good point and I don’t know, it’s not an area I have expertise in, just personal interest. The papers I’ve seen have been done on children who were in the mainstream school system with single sided deafness being left without extra help.
Hartmut
February 3, 2015
Cathy,
Since you seem to be a professional on this subject, you should have known this seminal work. It is a nationwide study done in the U.K.
Regardless, here it is :R. Conrad, “The Deaf School Child”, 1979, New York, Harper Row
Google “R. Conrad and testing Deaf Child” you may get some hits. He wrote several articles on it. .
Also you should read upon K.Heiling, “The Develpment of Deaf Cildren”, 1995, Signum Verlag, Hamburg. This is about comparative testings on Swedish school leaving students under oralistic and bilingual education in Sweden.
Also you should look into several publications from the Office Research Institute on the achievements of Deaf children in the USA.