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.

Government opens 30 new schools – but do they sound good for deaf children?

Image courtesy of www.guardian.co.uk

Yesterday looked like a fun day for the Government; they appeared to be on a Cabinet-wide office day out when they collectively when to visit 30 schools between them. Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, seemed to cram in around five visits in one day. A man with stamina, or a beneficiary of a secret government cloning programme?

I had a bit of fun too, but without leaving my desk. Throughout the morning, I tweeted the various tweeting Ministers to ask them whether the shiny new schools they were visiting were accessible for deaf children and had good acoustics. This was done on a specially created Twitter discussion thread. It proved to be a surprising and direct way to get the Government’s attention and highlight our Sounds good? campaign for good acoustics in schools. Ed Balls tweeted back to say that he would get back to me on our concerns. Another Minister, Jim Knight, also responded.

My colleagues now fear I’ve become a tweeting addict…

Zero information on acoustics in academies

A while back, we did a snapshot survey of local authorities to find out if the new schools in their area had been checked for their acoustics. A few got back to us to say that they didn’t know… because all of the new schools in their area are academies.

Academies are schools which have been given a bit more flexibility and freedom to run their own affairs. They are independent of their local authority and are run by a ’sponsor’ which can be, for example, a large business or a philanthropic organisations. They are often set up in areas of deprivation to shake up the system a bit and try and improve results.

So after getting these replies from local authorities, we decided to approach all new academies directly to find out about their acoustics. We were particularly interested to see what the acoustics are like given that many seem to have bright new buildings with innovative and open plan designs. Not a particularly unreasonable request, we thought. Parents of deaf children are likely to want to know the same thing and the information should be reasonably close to hand.

We contacted over 80 academies directly. So far, nearly 3 months later, only 14 have replied. Meaning that 4 in 5 academies have not bothered to reply.

What makes it worse is that there is not much more we can do to get this information, besides a few stroppy emails to chase. ‘Freedom of Information’ legislation does not allow us to demand information from academies in the same way that we can from public authorities. It means that parents of deaf children and organisations like NDCS have no rights to information about academies.

It raises a few concerns about whether deaf children and their parents are getting the support they need from academies…

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?

Sweyne Park School: where you can hear yourself think

I’ve just got back from a fascinating visit to Sweyne Park school in Essex. It’s a school with a large unit for mostly profoundly deaf children and which has been at the centre of some ground-breaking research into acoustics in schools.

The history is that the local authority was finding that too many parents of deaf children were citing poor acoustics as a reason for demanding the local authority for their children to be educated elsewhere. So Sweyne Park took part in a scientific experiment where individual classrooms where either given superior acoustics, or just met the government’s standards or were left untreated as a control group, with a view to improving acoustics over the longer-term.

While we wait for the research to be published, we decided to go and see and hear the classrooms for ourselves. It was a revelation. The classroom with acoustics that go beyond what the Government requires was incredibly quiet and calm – even though there were several one to one discussions going on in the classroom. It was as if background noise and babble was being sucked out of the room. I could almost literally hear myself think.

The classroom that just meets government standards was just about OK but the children’s voices were more audibly lingering around the classroom.

The ‘control’ classroom was very noisy. When I entered, I felt like I was enveloped by a wave of sound. Group discussions were going on and the children were talking louder and louder over each other to be heard. A communication support worker told me he found it more difficult to support deaf children in such classrooms.

The teachers had nothing but positive feedback about the new classrooms – that they didn’t have to shout anymore to strain their voices and that it was easier to manage the classroom. It was strange for me, but I personally felt myself tensing up just going into the noisy classroom whilst I felt quite relaxed and calm in the first classroom.

Our campaign position up to now has been that focused on getting the Government to make sure that all new classrooms met the existing standards. Having visited this school, I’m now wondering if we need to start arguing more for the standards to be upwardly revised…

What does the Government think of our acoustics campaign?

So whathas the Government’s response been to our campaign on acoustics in schools?

Well, some of it is probably unprintable. I’m fairly certain that officials would wish we would just go away. Our campaign has generated a fair amount of work for them. I feel their pain as an ex-civil servant myself. But then again, it wouldn’t take much for us to go away.

The campaign is calling for a new mandatory requirement that all new school buildings be tested for their acoustics. Some of the arguments deployed by the Government to try and justify not doing this have included:

1) A government review is already strengthening guidance on acoustics. Which is very welcome. However, we’ve already been told that the review will simply strengthen the recommendation that acoustic testing should be done. It won’t make it a requirement. We have evidence that a lot of local authorities currently don’t bother to test the quality of acoustics as it is ‘only’ a recommendation. So this won’t work.

2) Most new secondary schools are now being built through a programme known as Building Schools for the Future. For these schools, it has been proposed that testing will be a ‘condition of contract’ in a draft contract that all local authorities will be expected to sign. Again, this is very welcome. But, again, there is a but. It’s essentially a draft contract. It does not guarantee that all local authorities will use it. And it would only apply to secondary schools. Lots of new primary schools are also being built at the moment. They need to have high quality acoustics too to ensure effective language development.

3) It’s been proposed that more be done to educate the educationalists. I’ve never been entirely sure what educationalists do – but I gather it’s their job to decide how schools should be run and designed. Educationalists currently seem to be in a lather about open plan teaching spaces without having really thought about how good acoustics can be made possible in such environments. Again, this is welcome. But this should be happening anyway and I don’t think it takes away the need for acoustic testing.

I think it’s quite simple really. If government standards have been set, the Government needs to make sure they’re met. And the best, and only, way to do that is to have a hard requirement for new schools to be tested for their acoustics.

It’s not particularly expensive to do. We estimate it costs around 0.01% of the cost of new secondary school.

It’s a small thing to do that would make a big difference. And it’s a sure fire means of making the campaign go away!

NDCS uncovers damning evidence on acoustics in schools

Even though the Government is aiming to build or refurbish thousands of new schools, it has done very little to survey schools for their listening environments. It was always a bit of stumbling block for NDCS’s campaign. Although we had lots of parents and professionals telling us about their own experiences of new classrooms with poor acoustics and a wide range of other organisations supporting NDCS’s campaign, we found it hard to demonstrate that schools with poor acoustics were just one-off examples.

Well, no longer. We did a survey of local authorities in which we knew a new school has been built in that area since 2003. We got 38 usable replies. Of those, only 21% could confirm to us that the acoustics in the schools in their area met the government’s standards.

The rest couldn’t confirm because the schools in their area a) hadn’t been tested or b) had done a test but failed it. In fact, where testing took place, over half of local authorities had schools that failed it.

All of this now means that I can go around using the term “damning evidence” with wild abandon like a Daily Mail journalist. We think this damning evidence makes for compelling evidence for the central ask of our campaign – that all new school buildings should be required by law to be tested for their acoustics. A fail means they should not be allowed to open. This damning evidence should also result in the Government making sure it monitors the quality of acoustics in schools. Small charities like NDCS shouldn’t have to pay of it.

Along with the event, the hope is that this damning evidence bring us closer to the moment where the Government just gets on with it.

You can read the report here. If you’re outraged by the findings as we are, you can contact your MP and demand action. Over 300 of you have done so already.

FM systems a cure-all for bad acoustics?

One of the nice things about our campaign for schools that sound good is the positive response it’s got from other organisations and from individual parents and teachers of the deaf. We seem to have struck a chord and that lots of people feel that our classrooms are awfully noisy places in which our children are expected to listen and learn.

Obviously though, not everyone is supportive and one of the interesting things that has been said is that FM systems or personal microphone devices between a teacher and a deaf child overcome the disadvantage of poor acoustics. The implication always given, whether intended or not, is that you shouldn’t bother spending any money on improving the listening environment just for the benefit of deaf children – just give them a microphone.

One of the reasons why I’m good value for money as a campaigns officer is that I can rebut this quite easily just by talking about me. I had a microphone system in school when I was growing up. It was really important, yes, and allowed me to pick up what the teacher was saying more easily. Teachers would often forget to turn it off and my peers would be amazed that I could hear was going on in the staff room.

Unfortunately, microphones don’t just pick up what the teacher is saying. They pick everything else that was going on the classroom. If it was noisy, I would get a blast of amplified noise that made my head hurt. And the microphones were useless for group work or for picking up what other children were saying. And, like a lot of other deaf children, I used to personally loathe having to give it to teachers and to draw attention to my deafness. I often “forgot” to hand it over in assemblies. To this day, I don’t know how the Lord’s Prayer goes even though my hearing peers used to recite it every morning in primary school in assembly. No wonder I’m an atheist.

Anyhow, it seems like an obvious point. Yes, FM systems are needed. Yes, technology has moved on a bit. And good classroom management and deaf awareness / empowerment go a long way. But FM systems are a complement to good acoustics. They sure don’t solve bad acoustics. They amplify it! And, of course, not all deaf children use FM systems, particularly children with a mild hearing loss. What are they meant to do if the classroom is noisy? I personally dare anyone to makes this claim to speak with deaf children directly and to listen to what they tell them about their experiences.

We’ve made this point to the Government, as have other professional bodies, like the British Society of Audiology. The hope is that they do not use this alternative, flawed argument as a pretext for arguing it needn’t bother doing anything to improve acoustics.

Sounds good? An update on the acoustics campaign

So we’ve got a name for our campaign on acoustics – Sounds Good? – what else have we been up to? Here’s a brief run down:

1) My boss attended a conference in Manchester on building schools which apparently turned out to be a great networking opportunity with various local authority officials, designers and builders. Worryingly, my boss met quite a few builders who said that opt out from the Government standards on acoustics are widespread.

2) We managed to get the story covered in leading education newspaper the Times Educational Supplement.

3) We submitted a response to a limited Government review on the standards for schools that builders are *supposed* to be following.

4) We had a meeting with officials at the Department for Children, Schools and Families to talk about the scope for taking action on acoustics. The meeting was reasonably positive – but Ministers would need to get involved to push things forward.

5) And on that note, we have formally written to the Minister responsible for new school buildings, Jim Knight (the one that does all the typos), to set out our concerns and ask for a meeting. We’re hoping he’ll agree.

The more research we do, the more we get more worried about what is actually happening on the ground. For example, we’re getting a lot of feedback that school builders and educationalists are going gung-ho for open plan teaching areas – even though there has been no real consideration of how to ensure high quality acoustics in such settings.

A case of new policy ideas being pushed forward without a consideration of how the needs of children with special educational needs can be met? I feel a sense of deja-vu…

Our campaign is now moving to developing the logistics of our plans to engage with the media some more and with MPs. We have a few interesting ideas that we’ll be following up – so, as always, watch this space.

Thinking up a name for a campaign on acoustics…

NDCS has long been planning a campaign on the quality of acoustics in schools, but one of the trickier things has been trying to think up a campaign name for it. It had to be snappy and punchy and memorable – which ruled out anything with the word “acoustics” in it.

We initially zoned in on “Hear to Learn”. It linked sound quality with education – so far, so good – and was reasonably punchy. In fact, I wanted to go for “Hear2Learn” but I was outvoted by my colleagues. Apparently, using numbers as a substitute for a word is so last century. If so, someone should write a memo to Prince about this.

We were all set to go with this when two things happened. Firstly, we realised that NDCS had just released an educational DVD called “Here to Learn”. And secondly, we discovered that RNID has a project called “Here to Help”. “Hear to Learn” no longer sounded particularly original – so we threw that idea out the window.

We went back to the drawing board and canvassed of our colleagues and finally settled on a new improved campaign name. We’ve now gone for:

Sounds good.

And the final last minute twist? To add a question mark so it became:

Sounds good?

I like it beause it links sound quality with something positive. And the question mark adds some doubt into the arena by suggesting there is something out there with rubbish sound quality – like schools. The only problem with the name is that there is no link with schools or education. But after weeks of musing, I think there comes a time when you’ve got just to chose a name and stick with it!

What do you think of the campaign name? Grateful for any thoughts.

Of course, our entire campaign activity the past few weeks hasn’t been devoted to thinking up a name (ahem!) – come back soon for the latest on our campaign to make sure acoustics in schools are fit for all deaf children.