Remove these barriers of bricks and inequality

School buildings must stop being a barrier to learning

I MET a confident and inspiring young man called Christian last week. Born with a moderate to severe hearing loss in both ears, he recently passed his GCSEs with flying colours. He is now studying for his A-levels and has a bright future ahead of him. Unfortunately, not all deaf children in Wales are doing as well as Christian.

New statistics published by the National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) Cymru this month reveal that too many deaf children are underachieving in our schools. The data shows that in 2008, deaf children were 30% less likely to achieve 5 GCSEs at grades A*-C than their hearing peers. The figures, which have never been available in Wales before, also reveal large gaps in attainment at every Key Stage.

Deafness is not a learning disability and there is no reason why deaf children should not be achieving on a par with their hearing peers – as long as they receive appropriate support.

In a modern Wales with a Government which prides itself on equality of opportunity, where are we going wrong? Why is it that so many deaf children and young people in Wales are falling behind their hearing peers? Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to this, and there’s no quick fix. However, there are a number of barriers that are preventing many deaf children from reaching their full potential. In the interest of equality, the Welsh Assembly Government should be looking closely and carefully at addressing and bringing down each of these barriers.

One such barrier is poor acoustics in schools. It can often be difficult for children to focus on what the teacher is saying – there’s often somebody whispering and muttering in the background, noise from other classrooms, screeching as chairs scrape along the floor, coupled with an incessant tap of a pencil on the desktop. For children who wear hearing aids, these noises make it difficult to hear what is being said. Hearing aids amplify everything – including background noise. Some deaf children even turn off their hearing aids in class because they find it too noisy and too difficult to focus on what the teacher is saying when they have so many other sounds to contend with.

The way in which a school is built can help to reduce background noise and make it easier for many deaf children to listen effectively. And yet, as more and more funding is invested into building new schools, acoustics are often not fully incorporated into the build. Of course there are legal standards in place, which all new school builds should meet. But in reality, it is all too easy to opt out of these standards. Furthermore, many new schools are not acoustically tested before they open to ensure that they sound good.

In addition to poor acoustics, deaf children may face difficulties due to a lack of deaf awareness within the school community. There are a number of simple good practice guidelines which teachers can follow to ensure that their class is deaf-friendly. For example, many deaf children rely on lip-reading, so it is important to ensure that the lighting in a classroom is good and that teachers face pupils when speaking. Many mainstream teachers will not have taught a deaf child before and will therefore benefit from deaf awareness training to highlight the many simple and effective measures.

A deaf youngster once told me that she chose her GCSE subjects on the strength of which teachers understood her deafness the best, because she felt that she would stand a better chance of achieving good grades that way. This shouldn’t be the case. All school staff should be trained in deaf awareness. It is a matter of equality of access.

It would, however, be wrong to assume that the educational attainment gap between deaf children and their peers is all down to what happens inside the school; in many cases, the problem stretches beyond the walls of the classroom and must be tackled with a multi-pronged approach.

It should be recognised that professionals across Wales are working hard to support deaf children, but are often doing so with limited resources.

And then there is the matter of family support. It goes without saying that a child’s family life plays a fundamental role in their early development and acquisition of language. Some 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents who have no previous experience of deafness and it is therefore vital that all parents are given appropriate support to learn how to communicate with their deaf child.

Early identification of deafness is also essential to ensure that deaf children and their families receive appropriate and timely support. Wales made some great strides towards this end in 2003, when we became the first of the four UK nations to adopt a nationwide Newborn Hearing Screening Programme. The Welsh Assembly Government should be duly praised for rolling out this programme, but it is now essential that we ensure adequate support services post-diagnosis are available across the principality.

As is often the case with statistics – the new figures on the educational attainment of deaf children in Wales throws up more questions than answers. But these are important questions which must be explored, considered and addressed if Wales is to truly live up to its vision as a country which heralds the cause of equality of opportunity.

It cannot to be denied that Wales has already made a start towards improving services for deaf children. The implementation of the Newborn Hearing Screening Programme and the current review of Paediatric Audiology Quality Standards are notable examples of where the Welsh Assembly Government and National Assembly for Wales have taken clear steps to improve services.

However, we still have a long way to go to bring the 30% attainment gap down to where it belongs – 0%.