Children with hearing impairments struggling at school

A new report by The National Deaf Children’s Society, published during Deaf Awareness Week (4 - 10 May), reveals that nearly half of all children in the UK with hearing difficulties attending mainstream schools are falling behind their peers.

The findings are drawn from evidence provided by 614 parents of children with mild and moderate deafness and 166 teachers of the deaf from across the UK.

Nearly 70 per cent of parents said their children struggled in classrooms with poor acoustics, background noise or trying to understand speech from a distance.

A third blamed a lack of awareness among staff about their child’s condition.

The majority of parents reported that their child’s mild to moderate deafness had a ‘major impact’ on a range of educational activities, this included participation in assembly, outdoor activities, group work and during class.

According to the authors of the report, unless properly supported, children with mild hearing loss (up to 40 decibels) can miss between 25 - 50 per cent of what the teacher says in class. They warn this can lead to children falling behind in their learning, in particular with spoken language, reading, writing and spelling.

In comparison, children with moderate hearing loss (up to 70 decibels), miss over 50 per cent of speech.

In its report, the NDCS, which estimates that there are 20,000 children with mild and moderate deafness in the UK, goes on to make a number of calls to further support partially deaf children, including:

• for parents and young people to have access to more information about the potential impact of mild and moderate hearing loss and the help available;
• for teachers to have greater awareness of hearing impairments and the steps they can take to minimise its impact;
• for local authorities to ensure that services are sufficiently resourced to provide the necessary support for children mild and moderate hearing loss.

Susan Daniels, chief executive of the National Deaf Children’s Society, said, ‘Deafness is not a learning disability so there is no reason why deaf children shouldn’t achieve the same results as their hearing classmates. Over half of children with a mild or moderate hearing loss fail to achieve five good GCSEs, compared to 30 per cent of other children. This attainment gap is simply unacceptable. 

‘Mild and moderate deafness can often be overlooked because of a perception that it is not a serious condition or that children are "coping" at school. But often these children are nodding their way through life without really understanding what is being said and missing out on vital early development. No child should have to struggle at school because of misconceptions about the impact of mild or moderate deafness.’