Deaf Students (Educational Achievement) — House of Commons, 2015-01-13
Topic: Education
Anthony Edward Timpson (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck)on securing this very important debate. I want to take the opportunity to thank her not only for her personal insight into deafness, but for the work she has undertaken in her local area to support parents and carers of children with disability through the Make a Difference Plymouth parent support group. As she said, through her role as president of the Plymouth YMCA, she was instrumental in helping Yvette Beer and the Plymouth Deaf Children’s Society to secure new premises, which I understand she opened in December. One of the principal reasons for being so encouraged by hearing about such initiatives is that they are very much in the spirit of the special educational needs and disability reforms that came into force last September. I am sure I speak for the whole House when I express my appreciation to her for all she is doing to improve support for deaf children in her constituency As ever, I will do my best in the time available to respond to the points made by the hon. Lady, but if I run out of time, I will as usual write to her to pick up any outstanding issues The Children and Families Act 2014 sets out a range of measures to reform the special educational needs system so that it extends from birth to 25, giving children, young people and their parents greater control and choice in decisions about their support and ensuring that their needs are properly met. The reforms drew support from all parties and should work to the benefit of all children and young people, regardless of the type of need or impairment In addition, under the Equalities Act 2010, schools and other education providers must make reasonable adjustments for disabled children and young people to help alleviate any substantial disadvantage they experience because of their disability, and they must not discriminate against them. If children and young people need special educational provision or specialist services, the duties on schools, local authorities and others in relation to special educational needs then come into play. That ensures that strong legal protections and safeguards are in place To support deaf children in particular, the Department is funding many voluntary organisations to enable local areas to benchmark the support that they provide to them, and to access many of the tools and pieces of information on the most effective approaches. Much of the good practice that we know exists can then be used by many more people. We are keen to build on our understanding of the evidence about what works, and we will continue to work with organisations with expertise in this particular area. Our national voluntary and community sector grants programme is an important opportunity for us to continue to support good proposals. From my own involvement with charities supporting deaf people—including Signature, whose conference I spoke at in 2013—I know that there is a huge amount of knowledge and understanding that we can help to harness and bring to bear. We have provided £1.1 million to the National Sensory Impairment Partnership to carry out a benchmarking exercise and develop an outcomes framework for local authorities to assess how well they are supporting deaf pupils.