Fighting talk from Susan Daniel (NDCS CEO), in her article about the current educational system for Deaf children.
The reason behind her article is shown below:
Government figures published today highlight that record numbers of children (60 percent) achieved five GCSEs graded A* to C this summer (1). Yet only a third (32.9%) of deaf children achieve this pass rate (2).
The 1st paragraph of Susan Daniel’s article goes like this:
“Education is the single most critical service that determines the life chances of all children yet these figures show that too many deaf children are being let down by a system not fit for purpose.
“It is a scandal that the gap between what deaf children and hearing children are achieving at school continues to widen. There is no reason for a deaf child to achieve any less than their hearing peers. Deafness is not a learning disability……..(continued)”
It would be useful to have data available to compare various models on how these Deaf children are taught. i.e. via mainstreaming, deaf schools and whether the schools are performing or under-performing.
Deaf Education need a good long hard look on it own, without any other disabled sectors thrown in the equation, and look at what is best for the D/deaf children. As Sue said, being Deaf is not a learning disability so there is no excuse and it is the goverment who is underperforming for us.
Related to this blog: G.O.D.
hang on Tony, can you first of all make your post accessible to us non-oralists by avoiding using words like “bovvered”?
*tongue in cheek thinking one’s smart*
Granted….. 🙂
“a third (32.9%) of deaf children achieve this pass rate ”
This does not surprise me… but why are the Government, or the Education authorities are getting away with this?
Not surprised at all. The “professionals” are not interested in the individual. They are only interested in their budgets!!
Of course how and where these deaf children are taught and by what means should be clarified, it’s a bit vague. If one is going to state statistics, I’d rather see them via relevance, and fully identified loss degree etc, still this is how charities work, which is a pity as it doesn’t offer us a real target to aim at, it just suggest all deaf education is bad, which isn’t I think entirely true.. and offers a platform for various deaf extremists to suggest their own reasons and then blanket the areas as all the same… and all can be solved by putting every child back into a deaf school.. closed by and large because they didn’t deliver either.
We certainly need more data to work on as current data collation appears to be not far-reaching enough. @MM, would you object, if these kind of data were already avaliable, the so-called expert educationalists have a change of heart and decided a deaf school is the best place after all and the fact that mainstreaming/integration policy did not have the desired effects as initially hoped for, when 1981 Education Act came about. The writing is on the wall that this area need to go back to the drawing board – and draw expertise from the Deaf sector. I am at loss why it has taken 25 years to come to this conclusion.