New data about deaf children published

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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?

How the acoustics campaign victory woz won

Well, it’s been two weeks now since we won the campaign victory on acoustics and the Government announced a package of measures to improve acoustics in new schools. So how did it all happen? Having mused and reflected upon it, here are what I think were the five key ingredients behind the campaign success:

1) Getting good media coverage. We were fortunate that the Times Educational Supplement, which is read avidly by civil servants and Ministers at the Department for Children, Schools and Families, were keen to follow the campaign throughout the year and to keep highlighting the issue with stories popping up in January on the launch of the campaign, May about support from other disability charities and, more recently, in October about a new school with poor acoustics.

2) Getting the message out to MPs and peers. We invested lots of time and effort in making MPs aware of the campaign, encouraging them to sign a parliamentary petition and to write to the Department to demand action. We couldn’t have done this without our supporters taking action and writing to their MP to check they were on board. In total, nearly 600 emails or letters were sent to MPs and the Government on acoustics by our supporters. It helped that we had a simple message that was easy for MPs to understand and get on board, all of which ensured we had a cross-party army of supporters within Parliament…

3) Making sure deaf young people led the way. Of course, one of reasons why so many MPs were keen to support the campaign is that they had attended a parliamentary event we arranged in June and met with a group of deaf young people to hear about their own personal experiences of poor acoustics, and why action is needed. The same group also appeared on the telly on BBC2 programme See Hear to demand action. They made a powerful appeal for action which was difficult for MPs and the Government to ignore.

4) Making sure we developed a strong case for action. Whether it was doing our own survey of local authorities to confirm that too many new schools were being built with poor acoustics or commissioning research from a school in Essex to show the dramatic impact that improved acoustics can have, we were keen to make sure that our briefings to Government were backed up by a compelling set of facts, pointing to a problem that needs to be solved.

5) Negotiations over a possible law change. Having got lots of attention from MPs and peers, several were keen to try and get the law changed to improve acoustics. Baroness Wilkins, a member of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Deafness, tabled an amendment to the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill. We were quite lucky in a way; the Government was already behind schedule on this Bill and were keen to reduce the amount of time spent on debates in the House of Lords. But a good campaign exploits any luck and opportunities that presents itself. And so we entered into a game of brinkmanship and a series of negotiations to agree to a deal whereby the Department agreed to acoustic testing in exchange for the amendment being withdrawn. We ended up getting a good package that surpassed our expectations of what we could realistically achieve.

All in all, a good result for deaf children and lots of lessons to take forward to the next big campaign! I can’t chose but any thoughts on which was the most important factor out of this five?

Campaign victory for deaf children on acoustics!

Happy day!

After months of lobbying and weeks of nail-biting negotiations, the Government has today announced a new package of measures to improve acoustics in new schools. We’ve been calling for a new legal requirement for all new schools to be tested. What we’ve got is:

* A new contractual requirement for all secondary schools to be tested as part of the Government’s Building Schools for the Future programme.
* A new condition of funding – no more money for local authorities for new schools unless they can show that recently built schools are compliant with government standards on acoustics.
* An intention to consult on a legal requirement for all new schools to be tested in the future.

So, in practice, nearly all new schools will end up being tested. We’ve been promised a list of the small number that aren’t captured by the above – so we’ll know their names, and where they live…

Lots of follow up work to do now to spread the word… But come back soon for the insider info on how it all happened.

NDCS campaigns at Labour conference 2009: day 4

On our final day at the Labour party conference, on a day the sun disappeared, we were on the hunt… for someone to take responsibility for building regulations.

Our Sounds good? campaign on school acoustics has got the attention of Ministers and officials at the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), but to get what we want – a requirement for acoustic testing in all new schools – there needs to be a change to the building regulations which govern how school buildings are built. Which is the responsibility of the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG).

Sadly, though, having spoken to four Ministers who work at the Department, including the Secretary of State who in theory has overall responsibility for everything in his Department, none of them seemed entirely sure who was responsible for this issue. It was slightly worrying. In the end, one of them agreed to look into it further and get back to us.

Otherwise, the day was spent networking and going to more fringe meetings. Overall, there have been some really interesting fringe meetings over the past week. Some of the highlights include:

* The Every Disabled Child Matters meeting which featured four ministers in total. Our acoustics campaign got a mention when someone else asked about the accessibility of new school buildings. I raised a question about whether Access to Work, to pay for additional help for disabled people in the workplace, should be extended to disabled people doing unpaid internships, to help them get up the career ladder. The answer from the Minister for Disability, Jonathan Shaw, was that he would like to, but there wasn’t really any money for it. So that was that.

* At a NASUWT fringe meeting, we asked a few questions about acoustics. DCSF Minister Vernon Coaker, who used to be a deputy headteacher, asked my boss to “come and see him afterwards”. Fortunately, it was not for a detention or corporal punishment but to convey his desire to see this problem sorted out as soon as possible. He said he would ask officials to update him.

* And at a fringe meeting by Action for Children, with Baroness Morgan, Children’s Minister, in attendence, we again raised the concerns that the social care needs of deaf children are being overlooked.

Overall, it’s been a busy few days getting NDCS mentions here and there, introducing Louis Kissaun to MPs, and raising awareness of the needs of deaf children. Now we’re going to get busy drafting letters and doing all the things we promised MPs that we would do, before the next conference for the Conservatives in Manchester…

Any points you want us to raise at the Conservative conference about deaf children? Leave a comment and let us know.

End of term report on acoustics campaign

Parliament has now broken up for summer. As a campaigns officer, my initial response to this news is always “Praise be!”. As much as I love MPs, the summer months give us a time to reflect, strategise and do some blue sky thinking. Or some grey sky thinking if you’re enjoying the same weather as I am.

One thing we’ll be reflecting on is our Sounds good? campaign on acoustics. Looking back, I think we can point to some solid campaign ‘wins’, including:

* A recognition by the Government that there is a problem over poor acoustics, to which action is needed.
* A commitment to publishing guidance on how to achieve good acoustics.
* An unofficial clamp down on the use of alternative performance standards from those set out in government guidance, where there is weak justification.
* A recommendation of acoustic testing in new ‘minimum standards’ for new schools published by the Government.
* A reference to acoustic testing in new draft contracts for use by local authorities for new secondary schools.
* A promise to review the acoustics in new school buildings in future “post-occupancy evaluations”.

We’ve done this backed up my widespread support. Nearly 80 MPs have signed a parliamentary petition on this, 45 came to a parliamentary event, 16 organisations have endorsed the campaign and over 400 members of the public have contacted their MP to call for action on this issue.

All of this is pretty good. If we were to end the campaign tomorrow, I would do so with my head held reasonably high as I rush to buy some Pringles to celebrate.

But there is one very important thing missing that we think is needed: a hard mandatory requirement for new schools to be tested for their acoustics. Nothing has been put forward that would be a watertight requirement and which would apply to all new schools (and not just secondary schools). Without this, we don’t think there is any real incentive to make acoustics a top priority. It would fall off the radar as soon as we stopped our campaign.

Baroness Wilkins, a strong NDCS supporter, has been pressing to get the law changed to introduce this new requirement and her amendment will get debated after the summer. We had a meeting with civil servants last week to discuss this and we have a commitment that they will be seriously thinking about this.

In the meantime, we’ll be thinking about ways in which we can keep the campaign on the top of people’s minds when Parliament comes back from summer… Any ideas?

New strategy paper on education: what does it mean for deaf children?

The Department for Children, Schools and Families love to strategise. If I had a Krispy Kreme doughnut for every strategy paper that’s been published since I started this job, I would probably now be auditioning for the role of Jabba the Hutt in the next Star Wars film.

Their latest strategy paper is called: Your child, your schools, our future: building a 21st century school system. It’s a white paper, meaning that it’s a statement of intention to make lots of new laws in this area, probably later this year.

I read all through this morning and it was quite interesting. Critics will say it’s a desperate last gasp of a Government that’s running out of ideas, but I thought there was lots of sensible, useful stuff in it and a handful of references to the needs of children with special educational needs.

For example, pupils will now have a legal ‘guarantee‘ of what they will get out of school. It includes the right to additional support if children are falling behind. Assuming people are aware of it and that the guarantee has real legal teeth, it could be a useful lever to empower deaf children and their families to get the support they need.

There’s also a proposal that local authorities should survey parents to make sure they’re happy with the choice of schools in their area. Again, could be a powerful way of empowering parents of deaf children where suitable provision locally for deaf kids is not great.

A few concerns though. The white paper talks a lot of encouraging schools to work together and collaborate more to meet each other’s needs, with less centralised support from Westminster. Schools will also have more control over their own funding. This is fine – but we will need to make sure that schools don’t forget about children with low incidence needs, such as deaf children, and still make sure these children get the support they need. The white paper itself acknowledges there will still be a need for some centralised support services. We’ll be reminding them of this when it comes to sensory support services. We’ll also be reminding them of the ongoing need for action to close the gap in attainment for deaf children.

As always, the devil will be in the detail. And I need to find it, in true “Where’s Wally?” style.

What did you think? Is it good news for deaf children or do you think more needs to be done?

New sign language project launches

Back in February 2008, Malcolm Bruce MP, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Deafness in Westminster, asked Gordon Brown during Prime Minister’s Questions about support for sign language users. Fast forward to today and a consortium of deaf organisations were formally launching the I-sign project and celebrating £800,000 of investment from the Department for Children, Schools and Families to undergo work to raise the status of sign language in England.

I think the i-sign project is a really important and innovative project. It’s been going since early this year and brings together various strands of work which different organisations are leading on, including NDCS, BDA, Signature, RNID and others. NDCS is leading on developing a family sign language website to help families of deaf children learn useful signs for engaging with their deaf child. And we’re taking a close interest in the work being undertaken by Signature to develop a qualifications framework for communication support workers. It’s a two year project with ambitions to become self-sustaining. It’s quite refreshing to see different deaf organisations joining forces in this way.

The new Minister for special educational needs, Diana Johnson came along to the event to lend her support and meet some families of deaf children. She was quoted as saying:

“Overcoming the communication barriers experienced by deaf children is key to ensuring they get the best education possible. The Government is committed to providing parents and the school workforce the communication support they need to ensure deaf children fulfil their potential. I am delighted that we are funding such an innovative and exciting project. Developing qualifications for teachers and providing interactive materials for parents to learn sign language will help deaf children communicate effectively both at home and at school.”

And our deaf work experience student, Paul, ended up giving a short speech in front of the Minister about his own experiences growing up as a sign language user. Probably not what he expected when he joined NDCS for the summer – but we like to keep our interns on their toes…

Overall, a good day for deaf children.

Musical chairs as Government reshuffles

For political geeks like me, the last two weeks have been fascinating. How many Ministers would abandon ship? Would we have a new Prime Minister? Would the Government just implode and leave a massive cleaning bill behind?

Well, now the dust has settled, we can see who is left standing. And once again, the musical chairs reshuffle of Government Ministers means we have a few new faces in NDCS’s key departments of interest.

Perhaps the key one is at the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). Sarah McCarthy-Fry, who was the lead Minister responsible for special educational needs, has gone. Replacing her is Diana Johnson. Who, to be honest, I don’t know very much about though I need to find out quickly.

I can see the rationale for fresh blood. But it has been less than a year since the last injection of fresh blood. And now we have a period of uncertainty as we wait for the new Minister to get up to speed. And we have also have to start again with briefing the new Minister with details of NDCS, what we’re about and what we’d like from the Government. Just like we did less than a year ago. It’s like a Governmental Groundhog Day.

Perhaps the biggest pain of all is that a meeting between ministers at DCSF and the Department for Communities and Local Government that was due to take place next week and at which we were hoping to make a breakthrough on our acoustics campaign has now been postponed. The biggest irony of all? The two ministers in question have swapped over to each other’s departments.

Obviously, Government shouldn’t be run according to what’s convenient to campaigners like me. But I can’t help thinking, does this annual rejuvenation make for good Government? I’m not so sure.

Data on how deaf children are doing at school – now out

Last week, while I was sunning myself on holiday, NDCS published the data given to us by the Department for Children, Schools and Families on how deaf children do in their GCSEs in England in 2008. They don’t make for pleasant reading:

Only 28% of deaf children got five GCSEs at grades A* to C (including English and Maths) compared to 48% of all children. Put in another way, nearly three quarters of deaf children leave secondary school having failed to hit the Government’s expected benchmark of success.

27% of deaf children hit the same benchmark in 2007, so deaf children are doing slightly better. However, all children are doing better too. As a result, the attainment gap between deaf children and all children has widened between 2007 and 2008. When we do the number crunching, we see that in 2008, deaf children were 42% less likely to as well in their GCSEs than all children.

Given that deafness is not a learning disability, 42% is a pretty big attainment gap. We’ll be doing some media work to highlight this gap and to support our ongoing campaign to close the gap.

We also have data for each of the regions in England. London fares as the region where deaf children are least likely to do as well as all children. Here, a deaf children is 50% less likely to hit the Government’s expected benchmark for success than all children.

This is the first time much of the data has been made available. Some is already hidden away on DCSF’s website in a different format – but DCSF have not published regional data, information on the attainment gaps and details of three year averages. They’ve passed this information to us because we asked for it, and have been happy for us to go ahead and publish it for them.

DCSF’s website also contains information about how other groups of children get on. I haven’t checked for this year but in the past, the gap in achievement between deaf children and all children was greater than that between a) boys and girls and b) white boys and black Caribbean boys. The achievements of all children is obviously important – but it is striking how much attention has been placed on the latter two attainment gaps.

What do you think about the gaps in attainment? Are you surprised that it’s not narrowing? And what does the Government need to do to start closing the gap?

Have you contacted your MP yet? Reminder no.3

The campaign for better acoustics in schools is reaching a critical phase. In around a month, we will be hosting a parliamentary event where we will be asking MPs to come along and listen to a simulation of what bad acoustics sound like to a deaf child. And we will also be publishing our findings from some requests for information to local authorities. We’re still collating the replies – but initial findings suggest that way too many local authorities have schools which have not met the government’s standards on acoustics and that urgent action is needed.

The aim of all of this to try and maximise the pressure on the Government to take this urgent action and specifically, introduce a new requirement for testing of schools for their acoustics.

The letters that our supporters are sending to their MPs are really making a difference because these same MPs are writing to Ministers at the Department for Children, Schools and Families to ask them what’s going on. The hope is that a bit more pressure will help us get what we want.

So if you haven’t already, now is the time to contact your MP! As always, it’s easy, quick and you don’t need to know your MP is.

At the time of writing, 295 people had already contacted their MP. It would be fantastic to push this over 300 and to start to edge up to 350…. A few quick clicks is all you need, starting here.

I’m now on leave for a week, but I’ll be blogging about attainment data and the latest on our acoustics campaign when I get back – so watch this space.