Children are denied proper schooling

INCREASING numbers of deaf children are being denied proper schooling, while the Department of Education withholds a report commissioned to ease their plight.

Three years after the Government established an Advisory Committee on the Education of the Deaf in 2002 it was disbanded.

Two years later, advocacy groups are still waiting for its final report to be published.

Meanwhile, the proportion of deaf children attending dedicated sign-language schools is dropping — the number has fallen by 63% since 1991.

And, in mainstream schools, deaf children are being educated without the support of properly trained teachers.

In a large part of the west of Ireland students cannot avail of visiting support teachers because of a shortage of trained staff.

Chief executive of the National Association for Deaf People Niall Keane said his members are furious with how the unique needs of deaf people have been ignored.

“We have been pressing them [the department] to release the report of the Advisory Committee and to produce a register of all deaf children in the education system, but we have got nothing.

“We have grave reservations that deaf children are disappearing into the background. They don’t make noise and it is easy to let them just sit there and treat them like they don’t know how to learn,” he said.

There is still only one dedicated secondary school facility for deaf girls and boys and today 80% of students with profound hearing difficulties are in mainstream schools without adequate support.

Recently the Catholic Institute for the Deaf, which runs the country’s two second-level deaf schools in Cabra, published its strategic review.

It said: “There is widespread anger and disillusionment with public policy, or a perceived lack of public policy, in relation to deaf issues and particularly in relation to deaf education.”

Programme development manager for the Irish Deaf Society (IDS) Kevin Stanley said his organisation fed a lot of worthwhile research into the Advisory Committee, but it was ignored.

“The IDS regrets that the Minister for Education and Science disbanded the Advisory Committee in 2005, citing the divergent views.

“We the IDS challenged this by maintaining that there is a united views from Deaf Community perspective.

“The problem lies with the policy makers and authorities who wanted to retain the old system of deaf education, which is clearly not working, as there are 80% of deaf adults with literacy difficulties,” he said.

The department argues it has an extensive range of supports in place for educating deaf children and it is improving all the time.

However, a statement said it could not release the report of the committee.

“The committee was not in a position to complete its work and the department referred the matter to the National Council for Special Education for consideration.

“The Department will consider the matter following receipt of the council’s report,” it said.

Mr Stanley said it is not good enough to be in mainstream schools and not using sign language on a regular basis.

“The IDS researched with adults who attended mainstream schools. Their experience wasn’t a pleasant one with bullying, isolation, communication difficulties and poor social skills.

“The problem lies with the policy makers and authorities who wanted to retain the old system of deaf education, which is clearly not working as there are 80% of deaf adults with literacy difficulties,” he said.

“To the best of our knowledge there are approximately 2,000 deaf children who are attending mainstream schools with only 200 attending deaf schools,” he said.