Deaf Education in Scotland and Wales

We conducted a review of the impact of the Scottish national BSL plan on deaf education, in particular its issues, failures and successes, during Phase 1 of this project.

We are now delighted to announce that Phase 2 of this project has now been completed, and we have published a report together with a summary which is available in English, BSL, Welsh and Gaelic. Phase 2 would not have happened without the £4,418 awarded to Rob Wilks by the University of South Wales’ Faculty of Creative Industries Early Career Researchers Pump Prime Funding scheme.  We are grateful to them for this opportunity.

The purpose of the Phase 2 report was to ascertain whether there is an appetite at government or local authority level for deaf children to be educated in either BSL-medium or bilingual schools in Scotland and Wales, which have Welsh- and Gaelic-medium education provision respectively.  Nineteen interviews with a total of 21 participants were carried out with Scottish and Welsh Government civil servants, national public body representatives, council officials, college and university representatives, families of deaf children, Teachers of the Deaf and third sector employees.

Views on BSL

There were marked differences in the conceptualisation of BSL as a language between top-, mid- and low-level, with the top-level tending to veer towards BSL as a communication tool and having a greater awareness of language policy and the right to language.  At the mid- and low-level, there was however, a tendency to frame deaf children according to their audiological status, and that even though health – more specifically audiology – is outside education, it clearly exerts a huge force over the work of Teachers of the Deaf which would explain their attitudes towards BSL.  Gaps in early years provision for deaf children also emerged as an important theme, with recognition that it is this period that is vital for language acquisition.  The final theme identified through the interview stage was the availability or scarcity of resources in both Wales and Scotland for the teaching of BSL and in deaf education.

We have made 14 recommendations grouped under five headings: early years, language pedagogies, BSL teachers, Teachers of the Deaf and language policy.  These include developing a new profession of BSL therapists to support efforts to develop BSL in deaf children in early years, the development of language pedagogies courses, the commissioning of mapping exercise of BSL teachers, the expansion of undergraduate and postgraduate courses to provide opportunities to develop fluency in BSL, initial teaching training courses that incorporate BSL, and training for qualified teachers, supplementary resources and language sabbaticals for qualified teachers and Teachers of the Deaf.

The summary report is available in BSL, Gaelic, Welsh and PDF.  The full report can be found here.

The next steps in this project are to publish our findings in journals and to organise a UK-wide deaf education conference in 2023 or 2024 to which stakeholders at all levels should be invited to disseminate knowledge, language pedagogy and best practices.

Funding confirmed for Phase 2

We are delighted to announce that a total of £4,418 has been awarded to Rob Wilks by the University of South Wales’ Faculty of Creative Industries Early Career Researchers Pump Prime Funding scheme, which aims to support faculty researchers across career stages and across a range of the Faculty’s (inter)disciplinary areas.  The funds will cover the costs for phase 2 of the Deaf Education in Scotland and Wales research project: Deaf Education and the British Sign Language (Scotland) Act 2015: comparisons with the Welsh approach.

In November 2021, Rachel O’Neill and Rob Wilks published the first independent impact study of the BSL (Scotland) Act, The impact of the British Sign Language (Scotland) Act 2015 on deaf education, to act as a discussion point for parents, teachers, organisations and deaf young people themselves about what changes the Act has so far made in relation to their education.  The report made 14 recommendations for key stakeholders involved in the implementation of the Act including a public debate regarding language acquisition and binary attitudes, engagement with families of deaf children and young deaf people, transparency in relation to the funding of third sector organisations, an increase in the availability of BSL courses and an improvement in providing BSL content on websites.

A number of themes were identified that require further examination during the production of this report:

  • The conceptualisation of BSL as a language;
  • The extent to which attitudes towards deaf children as being either ‘BSL pupils,’ ‘other deaf children’ and/or disabled persist;
  • Internal and external factors in how the first BSL plans were drawn up; and
  • The role of the third sector in implementing the BSL Act and how they are funded.

 

Phase 2 aims to explore these themes in further depth in order to provide more context and understanding of the issues affecting the implementation of the Act’s first national BSL plan in relation to deaf education.  In the process, comparisons of the Scottish approach will be undertaken with Wales.  Of interest is the contrast between the two nations and particularly the role of the respective education systems in supporting BSL. In Scotland, the push has been to explore how hearing children can be encouraged to learn BSL (as opposed to deaf children learning BSL). In contrast, without a BSL Act in Wales, the focus has been to include BSL in the national curriculum which includes deaf children.

For the Welsh element, a literature review will initially be undertaken.  25 interviews will then be carried out with Scottish and Welsh Government civil servants, national public body representatives, council officials, college and university representatives, families of deaf children, young deaf people, Teachers of the Deaf and third sector employees.  We then plan to produce a report and a report summary translated into BSL and Welsh, which will be made available on this website.

Deaf education report released

The BSL (Scotland) Act 2015 was passed on 17 September 2015, received Royal Assent on 22 October 2015 and signified a new era in the BSL campaign for legal recognition across the UK.

The first National Plan by the Scottish Ministers was published on 24 October 2017.  There are ten long-term goals, a number of which are related to early years, school education and post-school education.  Firstly, public bodies were expected to make their information and services across the Scottish public sector accessible to BSL users.  Secondly, families and carers with deaf children should be given information about BSL and Deaf culture and be offered support to learn to sign with their child.  Thirdly, children who use BSL are to be encouraged to reach their full potential at school and be supported in their transition to post-school education.

The Scottish Government is currently reviewing this National BSL plan and the first progress report was released on 27 October 2021.

We are delighted to announce that we have produced a report contributing to the discussion about this review, focusing on deaf children and young people’s education. We used documentary analysis of BSL plans, websites, newsletters and an instant messenger chat group run for and by deaf teachers to analyse what changes the Act has brought for deaf children, young people, schools, colleges and universities.

A summary of the report can be found here together with a BSL translation.  The full report can be found here.

We would like to see a full and open debate about the BSL (Scotland) Act 2015 and how it is affecting the Scottish education system.  To that end, we would be pleased to engage with various stakeholders on the report’s contents, and you can contact us here to arrange this.  Please do let us know what sort of event you would like to organise.

The next phase of our research will be interviewing key stakeholders to find out more about their experiences before and since the Act was passed.

Please feel free to subscribe to our mailing list to receive updates.