Deaf children missing out in literacy lessons as additional funding announced

Following the Government announcement that additional funding will be granted for phonics teaching in primary schools, we're calling on the Government to take urgent steps to ensure that deaf children are not left behind.

The Government's national literacy strategy, Letters and Sounds, aims to improve literacy standards in all children through the teaching of phonics.

But its emphasis on the spoken word and listening disadvantages many children with a hearing loss.

We've issued a press release calling on the Government to ensure that deaf children will not fall further behind and we want some of the additional funding allocated for the teaching of phonics in primary schools to be used to help deaf pupils.

We're also calling on the Government to publish advice and provide training to help teachers ensure that pupils with hearing impairments fully benefit from the national literacy strategy.

Official figures suggest that over a quarter (28%) of all deaf children leave primary school without a basic understanding of literacy, compared with just 6% of all children. 

Deafness is not a learning disability, and there is no justifiable reason why so many leave primary school with levels of literacy so far below their school friends who can hear.

Ensuring that the teaching of phonics is accessible to deaf children is a key recommendation from the NDCS Must do better! campaign report on educational under achievement of deaf children.

Background

The Letters and Sounds guidance does not include any specific information on how to teach phonics to children with a hearing loss or any other speech and language difficulty. There is also no guidance on how lessons and activities can be adapted to ensure these children fully participate in the learning.

Phonics teaching is based on children learning that there is a link between the sounds of spoken language (phonemes) and the letters and spellings that represent those sounds in written language (graphemes).

As speech sounds fall between 20 to 60 decibels, children with severe deafness will not be able to hear sounds of less than 70 decibels whilst profoundly deaf children will not be able to hear sounds of less than 95 decibels.

In addition, many deaf children also find it difficult to hear consonant sounds, making it difficult for them to distinguish words.

For deaf children who have sufficient hearing to be able to access phonics, there is still an urgent need for guidance to ensure that teachers have the deaf awareness to adapt this part of the curriculum to meet the needs of the child, and that their school environment has deaf-friendly acoustics.