Insight: How the education system is failing my deaf child

Having grown up with a deaf brother, I knew there was a chance that my children could be deaf if I had inherited or passed on the deaf gene that was prevalent in my family.

I am a happy CODA (child of deaf adults)  and I’ve known sign language all my life. So when my daughter was diagnosed as deaf at birth I was fairly confident that I was somewhat equipped to deal with the multitude of barriers I knew she would face. I had a language anyway and that was more than a lot of hearing parents have when they first find out their child is deaf.

However, what I have learnt over the years is that the education system is not set up to support deaf children as they are. I am hearing myself so I know I am privileged and I can say that it is still a very much hearing world that we all live in.

I live in Essex in an area where there are good schools nearby. I am a single Mum and my daughter has two older brothers who are hearing. As my daughter reached school age we started to consider where she would be best placed. She is bilingual but reverts to speech mostly when she is with hearing friends and sign language when she is with her deaf family. She is a master at adapting!

I looked at a deaf boarding school but was advised that we would probably fail to get our Local authority’s support given that we had a wealth of “good schools” nearby. I didn’t want to go through that stress either so I started to look closer to home.

A Teacher of the Deaf advised me that it may be better socially for my daughter to attend the same school as her brothers and that we could apply for funding to support her in her classes. I felt comfortable with this idea and luckily with an Education Health Care Plan we managed get the council on board to fund a specialist teaching assistant.

I was adamant that the teaching assistant must have BSL level 3 at a bare minimum. I was told that this requirement would put applicants off and to ask for BSL level 2 instead. After going backwards and forwards I agreed to this and we were so fortunate in the end to find a TA who had level 3 in BSL.

My daughter really bonded with this TA, she was great, a natural at signing and relaying information, and all the other jobs that Teaching Assistants do. As a result, my daughter was able to thrive at school, enjoy learning, and feel relaxed knowing that everything was accessible to her.

Twelve months later, the school suddenly told us that the funding had to be cut and they couldn’t afford the hours the full time BSL-using TA was taking up. As a result our TA was asked to reduce her hours and take a massive pay cut. No other teaching assistant at the school was asked to do this, only the BSL one.

The teaching assistant worked for another 2 years supporting my daughter until she announced she could no longer afford the travel and such a minimal wage for the hours she was putting in. We were so sad to see her go and I was worried that my daughter would be left with no support.

We asked the school for a job advert to go out straight away to look for a replacement, yet the school were reluctant to do so. They asked if my daughter would manage with an ordinary Teaching Assistant who they could ‘train up’ to learn a ‘few signs.’ I couldn’t believe the suggestions they were making, yet as our Teacher of the Deaf then changed caseloads and the Headteacher announced she was retiring, it felt like we were in limbo, uncertain of what to do or who to go to for help.

My daughter was left without support at school for six months, relying on her hearing aids and phonic aid, and another teaching assistant came in occasionally to check she was following the class. I kept a close eye on my daughter when she came home from school, she would tell me she was tired and had enough of all the noise. Deaf children work so much harder than hearing children just to follow what is going on around them.

During this time I even thought about dropping my full time job and going into the school myself to support my daughter, but financially this wasn’t an option for me.

After working with the schools SENCO (additional needs coordinator) we were able to finally employ another teaching assistant who can use BSL, but I am still unhappy about how difficult everything has had to be.

Why should funding be such an issue when considering support for deaf children? Shouldn’t it be a priority?

How can a deaf child be expected to advance in their education if their support teacher only has a minimum of level 2 BSL? Especially as the lessons advance and get more complicated, how can all of this be supported by someone who has a limited ability in sign?

A Teacher of the Deaf told me privately that unfortunately as teaching assistant roles are so low paid, most BSL professionals choose to go into interpreting which is much better paid. I find this so sad as surely the importance of quality educators for deaf children should really be recognised.

My daughter is in her final year of primary now, and we have applied for her to attend a secondary school which has a specialist deaf resource base. At least if she gets in at this school I won’t have to worry about her support teacher leaving or funding being cut as the resource base has a specialist team all ready.

I knew that having a deaf child would bring its challenges, but I am so disheartened to see so many choices being affected by a lack of funding which to me actually translates as the government simply not valuing the role specialist teachers play in the education of deaf children. If they did then surely they would pay them the salary they deserve.

This blog has been written anonymously as part of the Insight series – where readers are invited to share their story or news about their interesting job with The Limping Chicken. If you have a story to share please email rebecca@rawithey.com 

Image courtesy of Pexels.