Free sign language lesson to be made available to primary schools next month (with BSL video)

Primary schools across the UK have been invited to take part in a free online British Sign Language (BSL) lesson next month, in celebration of this year’s Sign Language Week.

The 30-minute lesson, run by the sign language qualifications body Signature in partnership with Deaf charity the British Deaf Association (BDA), will be delivered by a qualified Deaf tutor on 15 March, from 10am.

It will then remain available online for use in future classes.

Lindsay Foster, Signature’s executive director, said: “BSL is a wonderful language and children love to learn it, we hope that by delivering this lesson it can show schools the benefits of offering sign language as part of their curriculum.

“Sign Language Week is a lovely celebration of the language, culture, and diversity of the deaf community. As an organisation we enjoy being a part of it and it’s really important to promote the beautiful, unique, visual language, this lesson gives us a great way to do that”.

Sign Language Week takes place from 13-19 March and is run every year by the BDA, with this year’s theme being “protecting BSL”.

Rebecca Mansell, chief executive of the BDA, added: “This year marks 20 years since the UK Government first acknowledged that British Sign Language is a language in its own right.

“We are also celebrating the recent passage of the BSL Act (2022) which finally recognised British Sign Language in law after many years of campaigning by the Deaf community.

“We look forward to the first cohort of students starting the BSL GCSE, which is currently in development with the Department for Education, and hope that similar curricula will be developed for primary schools in the near future.”

Primary schools interested in taking part in the lesson are encouraged to sign up via a form on SurveyMonkey’s website, and a BSL version of this announcement is available on Signature’s website.

Photo: Signature/British Deaf Association.

By Liam O’Dell. Liam is an award-winning Deaf freelance journalist and campaigner from Bedfordshire. He can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.