The Education of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children in Ireland

Mainstream schools
The Council recommends that ISL Levels 1 and 2 training should be immediately availa­ble to all 800 mainstream schools that have Deaf and hard of hearing children enrolled or about to be enrolled, initially on a clustered basis, at a total approximate cost of €1,059,200. Following delivery on a clustered basis, schools might also wish to undertake this training on a whole school, internal basis.
Specialist settings
The Council notes the recent publication by the National Deaf Children's Society (NDCS) of the UK quality standards relating to resource provision for Deaf and hard of hearing child­ren and young people in mainstream schools in the UK. A resource provision specifically caters for the needs of Deaf and hard of hearing children as an integral part of a main­stream school. It provides support from a range of specialist staff that ensures the needs of the Deaf and hard of hearing pupils are met within the daily life of the school.
The standards set out that all teaching staff within the resource provision should hold or be in training for a mandatory Teacher of the Deaf qualification. The standards do not specify qualifications that teachers should hold in relation to British Sign Language (BSL). However, they do recommend that, where Deaf and hard of hearing pupils use sign language to access the curriculum, communication support workers and teaching assist­ants should be qualified to BSL Level 3 or have BSL Level 2 and be actively working towards Level3 (NCDS, 2011).
The Council proposes that the DES should work towards a position where the following teachers have qualifications in Irish Sign Language that are commensurate with the above standards:

• 
  one teacher in every special school
  
• 
  all teachers in schools currently designated for the Deaf and hard of hearing
  
• 
  teachers in special classes for Deaf and hard of hearing pupils
  
• 
  teachers employed in the Visiting Teacher Service for Deaf and hard of hearing pupils.
  

The above teachers should be qualified to Signature Level 2 and be actively working towards Signature Level 3. (For a description of Signature levels, please refer to Appendix

2. 
   ) It is estimated that the full cost of training these teachers to Level 3, on a clustered basis, will be in the region of €436,800. (See Table 6).
   

A number of these teachers have already received training in ISL: 137 teachers took part in such training over a three-year period up to 2009, through the SESS support scheme (Source: DES, 2010). The full training cost could be spread over a number of years as it takes time for teachers to achieve these levels of competency.

2. 
   Introductory (one day) course for teachers of Deaf and hard of hearing children
   

To date, the SESS provides this one day course at five different venues each year. The aver­age per teacher cost for this course is approximately €70.
The NCSE recommends that this introductory course should be available to all class teach­ers, learning support and resource teachers in primary and post-primary mainstream schools who have a Deaf and hard of hearing child in their class/school for the first time. If, as a starting point, the SESS were to provide such training to one teacher in each of the 800 schools with a Deaf and hard of hearing child being supported through the NCSE, this would cost in the region of €56,000.
The total additional education funded costs are estimated to be in the region of €6.75 million. (See Table 6).