Burnley family support National Deaf Children's Society campaign for more support for deaf children

Thousands of deaf children across England are facing an educational emergency as specialist support for deaf children and their families has fallen to its lowest level on record, the Society is warning.

A new report, published by the Consortium for Research into Deaf Education, shows that one in five qualified Teachers of the Deaf posts in England have been lost since 2012, with nearly four in 10 local authorities seeing a decrease in the number of Teachers of the Deaf over the past year.

Burnley parents Lisa and Alistair Brennan have added their support to the campaign.

Seven-year-old son Thomas is profoundly deaf. He has had good support from Teachers of the Deaf when they have been in place but Lisa revealed he’s had seven different ones in four years.

Lisa said: “This is because of a lack of support and it increases the pressures we feel. I find it worrying that Thomas has had so many different ones, and it’s been unsettling for him.”

The charity’s grim prediction is that by 2030 their numbers will have plummeted by a third (32%) when compared to 2012, should the downward trend continue.

Teachers of the Deaf are vital in removing barriers which can stand in the way of deaf children and families. They give advice to parents and families of newly identified deaf children. They also visit deaf children at school or college to give them any extra help they need - and give tips to mainstream teachers and schools on awareness and inclusion.

The drop in numbers comes against a backdrop of more than a quarter of services finding it challenging to recruit new Teachers of the Deaf to permanent or supply posts, often because of a lack of qualified applicants.

The CRIDE report reveals incremental year-on-year decreases in numbers of Teachers of the Deaf, as their caseloads continue to increase. On average, each peripatetic Teacher of the Deaf now has a theoretical caseload of 63 deaf children, up from 46 in 2012 – an increase of more than a third (37%).

And the National Deaf Children’s Society is concerned that more than half of Teachers of the Deaf are over the age of 50, meaning they’re likely to retire in the next 10-15 years and further reduce the numbers available.

Funding is to be one of the key reasons behind the continuing fall. Evidence show a sustained pattern of cuts to budgets to these vital services over many years. Families have also said that specialist support from Teachers of the Deaf, for their children, which is not ring-fenced, is increasingly being rationed.

The National Deaf Children’s Society calls on the Government to clearly set out how its anticipated response to the SEND Green Paper will address this widening access crisis.

The charity believes the Government’s ambitions to deliver a more inclusive SEND system will only succeed if action is taken as part of a wider specialist SEND workforce strategy to invest in the training and recruitment of 200 new qualified Teachers of the Deaf to return staffing numbers to their 2012 levels.

Without this vital step, deaf children will continue to fall behind and the gap between them and their hearing classmates’ risks becoming even wider.