Deaf children in Brighton calling for better deaf awareness

Image courtesy of Guardian website

Yesterday, I was in Brighton encouraging a group of deaf children and young people to rebel and rise up against the system. At least that’s what I thought I was doing when I signed up to a NDCS Grafitti Day. Sadly, no governments were brought crashing down, but it was still an exciting day nonetheless.

This was one of a range of NDCS’s events to bring deaf young people together – many of whom go to mainstream schools and are the only deaf person they know – and have fun at the same time. The young people spent the day creating funky designs and then using some spray paint cans to graffiti it onto some blank Primark t-shirts. I am sure there will be some deaf young people strutting some funky stuff today at schools.

I was volunteering at the event to make sure everyone was having fun and also to act as a deaf role model. As a campaigns officer, it’s also always a good opportunity to ask some probing questions and develop intelligence on what deaf young people are thinking and what the word on the street is.

By the end of the afternoon, I had concluded that Joe seems to be the most favoured candidate to win X Factor by some distance.

But also, more seriously, that there are a wide range of things that deaf young people want to see change. One of the themes that came out quite strongly at this event was deaf awareness by friends and teachers. One teenager said that she was so frustrated once by a teacher who couldn’t seem to remember basic tips on deaf awareness that she left the classroom and made a formal complaint. She remarked that other teachers seemed to constantly forget how to use a microphone.

Another wanted to see more done to raise deaf awareness in hearing children, and suggested the creation of a new website specifically aimed at children, to complement the new NDCS Buzz website for deaf children and young people. Despite only being 11 years old, she had written a short but impressive article for the Newsround presspack website all about her desire for people to be more deaf aware.

All in all, it was an impressive and inspiring bunch of deaf children and young people. Something tells me that maybe they will get to change the system after all.

Google takes gigantic leap on access to online videos

Sometimes you come across a piece of news for deaf children and young people so good that it takes a while for it to sink in. That was the case for me when I found out that Google has developed speech recognition software that has the potential to ensure more online videos on most of its websites will now be subtitled. Including Youtube videos.

Personally, if you’d asked me a week ago about universal online subtitles, I would have said it’s a great idea, but probably technologically impossible. Well, thanks to deaf leadership at Google, I’ve pretty much been shown to be a complete Luddite.

The importance for deaf children and young people? Well, to give one example, listen into a playground conversation and I bet many children will be talking about the latest youtube craze or embarassment. Now deaf children and young people can be involved in those playground chats.

Hopefully, everyone who uploads videos will make use of the new software. And that all other providers of online subtitles will take note and follow suit quickly. I am particularly thinking of BBC news online and their continuing abject failure to caption stories featuring deaf children, despite assurances to the contrary…

As it uses speech recognition software, there are bound to be some painful (and amusing) typos. But it still a massive step forward. If there was an award for most promising and exciting technological development for deaf people in 2009, this would have to be one of the contenders. Maybe the 21st century is about to arrive for deaf children and young people after all?

In with the new: Queen reveals new education laws

Image courtesy of BBC news online

She may not been the musical theme on the X Factor (though it was fun to see John and Edward clarify that they were performing the hits of Queen, the group, and not Her Majesty), but the Queen had her annual fun day out last week on the 18th, when she paid a trip to the Houses of Parliament to read out the Government’s plans for the year ahead. Or rather for the 70 days left of parliamentary business before the next general election.

Two bills of interest to NDCS. Firstly, the Equality Bill. This is in fact a ‘carry over’ Bill from the last parliamentary year so NDCS will be carrying over our lobbying work on access to examinations for disabled young people.

The second bill is a new one, the Children, Schools and Families Bill. It contains a whole range of new proposals on education including on teacher training, curriculum, Ofsted and safeguarding. But one the proposals that is getting a lot of attention is the pupil guarantee, for children to have various entitlements to PE, one to one support, etc. Although it has its critics, I personally think it’s could be an interesting idea. We know that deaf children experience variations in the quality of provision they receive across England. If was drafted in a favourable way, could the new guarantee help ensure that all deaf children get a minimum standard of provision, with nobody left behind?

NDCS will be taking a close look at the Bill to see what opportunities it presents to improve education for deaf children. In the meantime, any thoughts on the Bills? Anything in particular NDCS should be lobbying on?

Out with the old: Apprenticeships Bill becomes law

Image courtesy of www.politics.co.uk

The parliamentary year ended earlier this month on the 12th. Squeaking its way into law on the same day was the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill, which aims to make a range of changes to post-16 education. After several days of long debates as the Government tried to get this Bill through Parliament, all hurdles were cleared and the Queen was kind enough to give the Bill the royal seal of approval, turning it into the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009.

I’d been taking a fairly close interest in the Bill for several reasons. Firstly, NDCS had been using the Bill as a vehicle for pressing for action to support our Sounds good? campaign on acoustics. In the end, we successfully got a package of measures without having to push for a change to the law on acoustics. Result.

Secondly, we’d been working with a range of other charities to make sure that deaf and other disabled young people would not be disadvantaged by the proposals in the Bill. One key issue was over access to apprenticeships. The Government wanted to create a new entitlement to apprenticeships for suitably qualified young part as a part of a new government scheme. However, it was decided that if you wanted to take part in this scheme, you would need to hold GCSEs in English and Maths to access this scheme. Considering the legacy of under achievement by deaf children by a system that fails to meet their needs, and considering that GCSEs in English and Maths may not be a necessary requirement for all apprenticeships (do you need to know how to do pythagoras to do a hairdressing apprenticeship?), NDCS felt this was unfair and discriminatory.

So, after a lot of emails from us to the Department for Children, Schools and Families and lobbying of Ministers, largely via the Special Educational Consortium, we finally got the Government to agree to relax this requirement. Now, deaf and other disabled young people will be able to provide a ‘portfolio of evidence’ if they do not hold these specific qualifications as a means of entering the government apprenticeship scheme. Double result.

A good result to end off the parliamentary year. Wonder what the next parliamentary year will bring?

New data about deaf children published

Image courtesy of http://images.clipartof.com

A few weeks back, the Department for Children, Schools and Families published a report with lots of data about children with special educational needs. For a geek like me, it was a dream come true. Pages and pages of spreadsheets and percentages and important footnotes to pore over. Sigh…

Anyhow, the report had its origins in the Special Educational Needs (Information) Act 2008. Sharon Hodgson MP pushed hard for this and NDCS was among a group of charities lobbying hard for it. The Act aims to shine a spotlight on special educational needs in the hope of galvanising Government to take action to improve outcomes. The report brings together lots of information for the first time on children who have been formally recognised as having a special educational need (i.e those who have a formal statement of need or who have been placed at ‘school action plus’ and are getting extra help that way). So it doesn’t include information on all deaf children, and needs to be used with caution, etc. but what information it does have makes for fascinating reading (assuming you’re a geek like me). And also depressing, when you see the full extent of the poorer outcomes that deaf children experience.

A few of the interesting statistics that I’ve picked up so far include…

* In 2009, there were 14,770 deaf children formally identified as needing support. 500 more than last year.

* There are more boys recorded as having a hearing impairment: 7670 boys to 7100 girls.

* More analysis needed but it appears that children from an Asian background are more likely to have a hearing impairment. Of all Asian children with a statement, 7.8% were hearing impaired, compared to 2.5% for white children with a statement.

* The number of deaf children recorded drops dramatically at the age of 16. At age 15, there are 570 children with a hearing impairment with statements, dropping to 240 at age 16. We’re left wondering what happens to these children; whether they leave school, continue in further education with support or cease to receive any support at all.

* 4.9% of deaf children recorded are likely were defined as persistent absentees in 2007-08, compared to 2.4% of children with no identified need. Deaf girls are more likely to be defined as persistent absentees than deaf boys.

And that’s just for starters. Much of the data raises more questions than it answers. But this is not necessarily a bad thing before – the lack of any data before meant that we didn’t know what questions we needed to be asking.

I’m off on holiday next week – don’t worry, I won’t be taking the spreadsheets with me for holiday reading – but am looking forward to looking through the data in more detail and getting a full report on NDCS’s website. In the meantime, what do you think of the data so far? Anything surprising or particularly shocking in there? Anything missing you really want to know?

New survey on TV subtitles: have your say

Image courtesy of RNID

When I ask deaf young people what their pet peeves are, invariably they mention the quality of subtitles on TV. So I was pretty pleased to see that RNID have commissioned some research to look at what people think about subtitles. And they’re currently asking deaf people to feed in their views to help with their future campaign work on this. It includes some interesting questions about whether it’s more important to have speed or quality when it comes to live subtitles. Where do you stand on the trade off?

I’ve filled it in and taken the opportunity to have my annual whinge about subtitles on the X Factor… Why not have your say and help make a difference?

And if you feel really outraged about particular programmes with rubbish subtitles, there’s some information on NDCS’s website about how to complain to individual broadcasters. Go on, make a fuss, you know you want to…