Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will revise the changes made to the Final version of the Specification for Mandatory Qualifications for specialist teachers of children and young people who are deaf between 6 and 13 October 2015.

Our aim is always to ensure that the Mandatory Qualifications (MQ) continue to be a high quality qualification that is flexible in its content and in its model of delivery in order to meet the needs of the sector.

We work closely with the National Sensory Impairment Partnership (NatSIP) as representatives of the sector. We ran a consultation with the sector to make sure that the MQ remained current and reflected changes in policy. As a result of the consultation we made a number of changes to the MQ specification. We published the revised specification on 7 September 2015 on GOV.uk.

After publication, we responded to advice from NatSIP and made a further amendment to the specification making it clearer that the specification reflects the minimum skills required to be a teacher of the deaf.

We have no plans to make changes to the final version of the specification; we will keep the specification under review and continue to engage with the sector through NatSIP.