Deaf children are slipping further and further behind in their secondary school education claims a new report with only 36.3% of them hitting the national GCSE benchmarks.
Deaf Children Slipping Further Behind
The new figures have been released by the Department of Education (DfE) and show that a gap is widening between deaf students and their hearing classmates - 65.3% of hearing children are hitting their GCSE targets by the time they are leaving secondary school.
As well as a widening gap between deaf and hearing children at secondary school, a separate report from the National Deaf Children's Society (NDCS) has shown that there has also been a drop in the number of qualified teachers of the deaf. The number has dropped from 1,031 to 999 and shows that deaf children are not being given the tools to thrive in secondary education.
This is set to cause more concern when the number of deaf children in England has risen to over 40,600 this year, which is up 7% on 2013. The NDCS report - which was done on behalf of the Consortium for Research in Dead Education (CRIDE) suggests that over half of teachers for deaf students are set to retire in the next 10-15 years.
With many teachers of the deaf set to retire and now enough new teachers coming through in this area, this looks set to be a growing and a rather alarming problem over the next few years.
However, it is a problem right now as Elayne Nunan reveals that her sixteen-year-old daughter has never received any supporting during her education. Sixteen-year-old Jodie has moderate hearing loss in both of her ears and has struggled at school - despite her mother's constantly asking for help and assistance for her daughter.
"Jodie has never received any kind formal support with her education. Time and again, I've raised concerns and begged for help, knowing how badly she was struggling and failing to keep up with her classmates and that when crunch time came she'd be falling off the edge of a cliff.
"Now that she is going to be faced with sitting her GCSE's and is already bogged down with catch-up and revision, I'm not very hopeful about the grades she will get. If Hayley had received the extra help that I was fighting for, who knows what she could have achieved and where life could have taken her."
Susan Daniels, CEO, at the National Deaf Children's Society has called upon the government to do more in light of these new figures: "Deafness is not a learning disability so having a widening gap in GCSE attainment is simply unacceptable.
"The dwindling support from local authorities for qualified deaf teachers is resulting in deaf children being set up to fail and lagging behind throughout their education. It's crucial that the Government takes action to clarify how local authorities will be properly held to account for failing deaf children."