Deaf Students (Educational Achievement)

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

I am very pleased to have been given an opportunity to raise an issue that is of importance not only to my constituents, but to many other families and young people across the country. Deafness is a disability and although that does not mean that children who are deaf are categorised as having learning difficulties, it most definitely means that learning can be difficult. There remains a wide attainment gap between deaf children and their peers. There are a variety of reasons why that is the case, but it need not be that way. It is clear that more could be done across the country to ensure that deaf children receive the support they need to close the gap. It is important to emphasise that while this debate falls under the Department for Education’s brief, it is also clearly a health issue, so unsurprisingly I will touch on health matters in my comments.

Deafness affects more than 45,000 children in the UK, the majority of whom are born to hearing parents with no background in deafness. More than three quarters of them attend mainstream schools with little specialist provision, where they are often the only deaf child in attendance. Most of those deaf children—85%, in fact—do not have a statement of special educational needs, but when they reach working age, just over 50% of them are in employment, compared with 80% of the non-disabled population. We are clearly not assisting them in achieving their full potential.

It is important at this stage to establish who I am talking about when I refer to “deaf children”. When the National Deaf Children’s Society talks about deaf children, it means any child with hearing loss from mild to profound, whether temporary or permanent and whether in one ear or both. Even a mild hearing loss can have a negative impact on deaf children’s achievement. Recent Government figures show that just 43% of deaf children achieve five GCSEs, including English and maths, at grades A* to C, compared with 70% of children with no identified special educational need. It is the Government’s main benchmark for GCSE success, and there is no reason why we should not have the same educational benchmarks for deaf children as for their peers. Clearly more can be done to support these children throughout their school life and to best prepare them for the working world.

I say this as someone with deafness myself. I am, as many in the House are aware, completely deaf in one ear and have been since the age of 16 when I contracted mumps. The damage to my nerve endings meant that nothing could be done to enhance my hearing. It poses problems when there is ambient noise, in a room with poor acoustics and in the Chamber, Mr Deputy Speaker—quite frankly, if you were to speak to me, there is a good chance that I would not hear you unless I was looking at you. I would not be aware that you were talking to me. That happened at one of my early forays at the Dispatch Box. The only way I knew that something was amiss was that I could see the faces of the Members on the Benches opposite, who looked somewhat puzzled that I had not responded to the fact that the Speaker was standing and trying to attract my attention. That can clearly pose problems in a classroom and throughout the education process for many young people, and for teachers who have to consider the physical placement of those students within the class and the eye lines and the background noise during the lesson.

In September I met a young woman called Renée, a lovely and bright 17-year-old girl who is profoundly deaf in both ears and has two cochlear implants. To communicate, Renée uses a combination of speech and British sign language and can lip-read. She told me how hard it could be for her and many of her deaf friends to concentrate and focus on their work in school or college. Especially at the age of 17, when friends are finding their own way in the world, she found it hard to become truly independent like many of her peers, but she has not let any of these obstacles affect her, as they can so many. She sits on the National Deaf Children’s Society’s young people’s advisory board, is a peer buddy at her school, is a member of the National Portrait Gallery youth forum and wants to become an art therapist when she finishes her education. I am sure that she will excel, yet sadly many who experience similar obstacles do not.

Addressing the issue does not simply lie in the classroom. It starts with providing the best possible care and services we can for deaf children. The National Deaf Children’s Society believes that one third of audiology services are failing to provide for deaf children. It has NHS figures that it believes show that those services are failing to see children within Government time frames, failing to use the most up-to-date tests, incorrectly setting up hearing aids, seeing too many children during school hours when they should be learning, and even lacking deaf awareness. The suggestion that the Government are planning to stop assessing the quality of children’s audiology services is therefore very worrying. I realise that this is not a matter for the Minister, but I hope that he will pass my concerns on to his colleagues in the Department of Health. That decision has clearly had a knock-on effect on the educational development of these young people.

Why are audiology services so important? As we know, children learn and socialise through hearing, so it is unsurprising that hearing loss can present considerable challenges to a child’s progress at school and their ability to make friends and develop socially. Good audiology services make a critical contribution to a deaf child’s success in life, as they are responsible for ensuring that a deaf child can use their remaining hearing to the fullest possible extent.

The Government recommend that newborn babies should receive an audiology appointment within four weeks of referral. Older children should be seen within six weeks, and rightly so, as hearing is critical to a child’s development of language and learning, and early diagnosis is vital as it will reduce the risk of delays in language, educational and social development.

The problem is that when asked by NDCS about the length of time it took to get their child an audiology appointment, 44% of parents said that they had to wait five weeks or longer, and 20% said they had to wait for more than eight weeks. At such a young age, that length of time without diagnosis can be seriously detrimental and will certainly put those children behind others of their age when it comes to starting school.

Obviously, effective hearing aids are an integral way of mitigating the effect of deafness, and making sure that they are correctly set up and fit for purpose is essential. Children grow out of the ear moulds for their hearing aids as often as they grow out of their shoes, and any parent will be well aware that that can happen every few months. If a child experiences a delay every time they need an ear mould replaced or if a new one does not fit correctly, they lose out on significant listening and therefore learning time. Sadly, almost 80% of the parents who spoke to NDCS said that they had waited longer than the target time for their ear mould impression appointment. Those are all health issues, but they obviously have an educational impact in the classroom. Almost three quarters of deaf children fail to achieve a good level of development in the early years foundation stage assessment. If deaf children are struggling to attain the same educational outcomes as their non-disabled peers, consider how challenging it must be for deafblind children.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

In 2011 a school was built in Belfast specifically to cater for deaf and blind children who needed the level of educational standard it delivered. The school gave those people an academic standard and achievement that prepared them for jobs in future life, but it was done through private finance. Does the hon. Lady agree that the Government could follow that example from Northern Ireland, and that the Education and Health Departments could work with the private sector to look after those who are deaf and blind?

[Alison Seabeck]

The hon. Gentleman has always brought interesting examples and ideas to my previous debates on health-related issues. I am sure the Minister has listened to him. We should seek to learn from any example of good practice, whether it be in the public or the private sector, but whether we would support rolling out the private element more widely is a different issue. That said, if the practice is good and the children are achieving, clearly we should look at it.

Although there are fewer deafblind children than deaf children in the UK, they face a unique set of challenges —of which the hon. Gentleman is clearly aware—when accessing education, and they therefore require specialist support. To be able to get that support, they first need to be identified as deafblind, which is their local authority’s responsibility. Every two years, the charity Sense conducts a survey of local authorities and their identification rates. It estimates that local authorities should be identifying 31 deafblind children per 100,000 of the population. In 2014, they were identifying on average just 14 per 100,000, which is a 7% drop from the figures reported in 2012. The low identification rates are attributed by Sense to poor professional awareness of deafblindness and to inadequate information sharing between agencies. Although this is a crossover issue for health and education, I am concerned that identification of deafblindness is proving to be more difficult and that fewer young people are being identified early enough in the process.

In Plymouth, as in the rest of the country, the number of deaf children has risen. In 2012 there were 171 deaf children in Plymouth and by 2013 there were 175. In the south-west as a whole, 49% of deaf children managed to achieve five GCSEs at grades A* to C in 2011, which is more than the current national average, but way below the average for children without a special educational need. In 2013, however, the attainment levels dropped, with just 40% of deaf children achieving the target of five GCSEs.

Clearly there is an issue. I welcome statements by local authorities that specialist education services are increasing, despite the cuts in the system, and that a review of the specialist educational service for deaf children will go ahead in 2014-15. However, there is a shortfall in specialist teachers nationally and that is having an impact on Plymouth. In England, the national average ratio for visiting teachers of the deaf to children is 1:44. In Plymouth, with just two visiting teachers of the deaf, the ratio is 1:72. I am told that those two specialist teachers are being stretched by unrealistic and unmanageable caseloads. What is being done to recruit, train and, importantly, retain teachers across England with that level of expertise?

The impact on education of being deaf is not only felt at a young age. Many young people continue to experience problems when in higher education. When I met NDCS at the Labour party conference in September, I was told about a young man who relied on note-taking support at university, but when he started his first term he found that no support had been organised, despite the fact that the university had been given plenty of notice of his needs. Unsurprisingly, that made his first couple of months very stressful and unproductive. The issue affects the whole of the education spectrum—from nursery right the way to young people seeking to move from secondary education to university—and it needs to be addressed.

Deaf students will certainly be impacted by the changes to disabled students allowance, in relation to which there has been no mention of non-medical help, such as using British sign language interpreters. I wonder whether the Minister has discussed that issue with his colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. As I have said, young people coming out of mainstream education and seeking to progress to university may find that that journey is not possible because of the new barriers that are being erected. Randstad student and worker support has told me that 27.7% of the students it surveyed said they would not have attended university without DSA. I am sure the Minister is as anxious as I am not to close off any option to pupils who wish to progress their education.

What needs to be done? Obviously, budgets are tight, and everyone is being asked to do more for less. Charities such as the Plymouth Deaf Children’s Society are working with partners, including the Plymouth YMCA, which has provided admin space in its premises and is incredibly supportive. I have some wonderful people working with various organisations, such as something called CHSWG—the Plymouth Children’s Hearing Services Working Group—and the Plymouth Deaf Children’s Society, including its chair, Yvette Beer, who is fabulous. They are doing a lot of good work, but they were very anxious for me to come to the House to raise some of the concerns that they had raised directly with me.

From my remarks, the Minister will understand not only that we risk making the educational pathway of many young people more difficult, but that there are still gaps in the existing provision. I look forward to hearing his comments.