Video of deaf children wishing you a merry Christmas!

To help you get in the festive mood, here’s a cute video of deaf pupils from Heathland’s school signing you a merry Christmas.

Watch now >

Hope you all have a good one and see you in 2011!

GCSEs attainment gap for deaf children closes!

Image courtesy of www.deafblog.co.uk

With the new ice age upon London, I came across some good news the other day that warmed the cockles of my heart.

After years of stagnation, the attainment gap between deaf children and other children is finally beginning to close with provisional government figures showing deaf children making a big leap in the last year. Last year, 29% of deaf children achieved the government’s benchmark for GCSE success. This year, it’s 36%, compared to 66% of children with no special educational needs.

The attainment gap is still pretty wide and there are still far too many deaf children under achieving. But the new figures do at least hold out the promise that the National Deaf Children’s Society’s campaign work to close the gap has begun to have an impact. By shining a spotlight on how many deaf children under achieve and banging on about the injustice of it, I hope the campaign has led to higher expectations for deaf children and better results. Not that I want to take all the credit for these figures…

Of course, all of this could be placed at risk if local authorities make massive cuts to their services for deaf children. NDCS is continuing to call on decision-makers to protect funding for these vital services. Members of the public can show their support by contacting their local councillors about this issue.

But for now, a nice piece of news to enter the Christmas holidays with.

New figures on deaf children’s under achievement at primary school

Some government statistics on how children do in exams at the end of primary school came out last week. An early Christmas present for data geeks like me from the Department for Education.

Anyhow, what do the figures say about deaf children?

The good news is that deaf children are doing slightly better than they were five years ago.

The bad news is that this is a small consolation given that there are still far too many deaf children not achieving expected levels of progress. In English, a whopping 47% of deaf children left primary school without achieving expected levels of literacy, compared to just 7 of children with no special educational need. The figures are not much better for Maths.

One of the key messages from NDCS’s Hands up for help! campaign is that deaf children are not getting a fair chance to achieve. These new figures pretty much confirm this. The big worry now is that if lots of councils now make cuts to help for deaf children, any small gains will be reversed and an unfair situation will get even more unfair.

What do you think of the figures? As always, leave a comment below to have your say.

Bristol to close special school for the deaf?

Bristol local authority has said they are thinking about closing Elmfield School for Deaf Children and replacing it with two resource bases for deaf children within mainstream schools.

Here are my top 5 reasons for why I personally think this is nuts.

1) It will reduce choice for deaf children in Bristol and across the area, especially for those who want a bilingual approach to learning. Every deaf child is different and a range of provision is needed to meet their needs.
2) The authority has rejected the findings from an independent external review of deaf provision in Bristol which said the school should stay open.
3) The law requires the authority to show that by closing Elmfield School, it will improve things for deaf children. So far, they haven’t. So far, they haven’t even identified where one of the new resource bases is going to be!
4) The school has been graded by Ofsted as “good” and “improving”.
5) Most importantly, it will cause massive upheaval to deaf children and their parents. Deaf children deserve better.

The threatened closure will also provide the first real test of the coalition Government’s commitment to preventing the unnecessary closure of special schools. Will they intervene?

Overall, I think Bristol has some explaining to do….

PS Here’s NDCS’s official statement. The school will be campaigning actively on this and NDCS will be working to support parents on this.

Hands up for help on the telly

The BBC2 programme See Hear featured the National Deaf Children’s Society Hands up for help! campaign this week. It was a great summary of what the campaign is all about and included some good vox-pops, such as one from a deaf young person on why her visiting Teacher of the Deaf is so important. It also included a cute deaf baby if you like to go “awwww!” at such things.

Image courtesy of www.bbc.co.uk

One of the Mums was from Hillingdon in London and See Hear went on to interview a man from the council. He basically admitted that the council doesn’t provide better support because it doesn’t have the money. So there you have it. If you’re a deaf child in Hillingdon, you’re probably not getting a fair chance to achieve. And this situation is being repeated all across the UK.

If you’re angry about this, you can contact your councillors using NDCS’s fancy thingybob to demand they, at least, maintain spending on help for deaf children. At a time when lots of councils are making cuts, the situation in places like Hillingdon could get even worse.

Oh, and you can watch the See Hear programme online. Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.