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ITEM EX9

EXECUTIVE – 4 MARCH 2003

USE OF BRITISH SIGN LANGUAGE AND THE STANDARD MANUAL ALPHABET IN SCHOOLS

Report by Acting Chief Education Officer

1. The Learning & Culture Scrutiny Committee on 10 December 2002 adopted the following motion by Councillor Brian Hodgson which had been referred to it by the Council:

"This Council welcomes the fact that all our local schools are involved in the active development of an up-to-date and effective curriculum in the field of disability awareness and practice. The Council therefore invites the Executive:

1. to plan to ensure that all pupils are taught the Standard Manual Alphabet, as a basic signing medium for communicating with deaf people; and
2. to urge the government to provide funding:
   
   

1. for an Oxfordshire pilot project for the teaching in school of the basics of British Sign Language (BSL); and
2. to help the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) in its efforts to train more BSL interpreters nation-wide."
   
   
2. This report provides an outline of the use of BSL nationally and an Oxfordshire perspective.

BSL and the Standard Manual Alphabet

3. Approximately 8.7 million people in the UK are deaf or hearing impaired. It is estimated that some 70,000 of those use BSL as their first or preferred language. It is the most widely used method of signed communication in Britain but is only used here. Other countries have their own sign languages. Some people use Sign Supported English (SSE) which is not a language in its own right, but more a kind of English with signs.
4. BSL has evolved naturally as languages do. It uses both manual and non-manual components - hand shapes and movements, facial expression, and shoulder movement. It is structured in a completely different way from English and like any language it has its own grammar. For example, the question in English 'What is your name?' becomes the sequence 'Your name what?' in BSL.
5. People who use BSL also use finger spelling – the Standard Manual Alphabet. Finger spelling alone is not sign language: it is an additional communication system to provide visual information on words which do not have BSL signs - usually names of people and places. Each letter of the alphabet has its own sign so words are spelled out slowly.
6. The ability to develop good communication skills will help a deaf child to build up confidence to communicate with others and in turn will help them to develop emotional, personal and social skills. All deaf children can learn to communicate using one or more of a variety of approaches including spoken language and/or BSL.

BSL in Oxfordshire

7. Oxfordshire’s Hearing Support Service, together with the Language Support Service and Visual Impairment Support Service, make up the Sensory and Language Support Services. These specialist teams deliver a range of services and provision that includes 6 resource bases for deaf children (attached to mainstream schools) as well as outreach support to teachers and children.
8. Where children are in schools with bases they spend most of their time supported in the host schools’ classes but are withdrawn for the provision of specialist teaching and other services. A small number of deaf children are placed in out-of-county non-maintained special schools.
9. Currently only one child within Oxfordshire’s schools is following a BSL approach. An auditory-oral approach to the acquisition and development of language and communication has been adopted for almost all of Oxfordshire’s deaf children and the majority of the Service’s teacher expertise lies within that field. This approach emphasizes the encouragement of listening skills to develop spoken language. It is supported by the use of cochlear implants and hearing/radio aids and does not rely on signing or finger spelling. BSL and the particular auditory-oral approach used in Oxfordshire schools are only two of a range of approaches to communication which include lip reading, sign supported English, sign bilingualism (a sign language plus a written/spoken language) and total communication (use of different methods at the same time). It is fair to say that there are differing and strongly held views on the efficacy and appropriateness of these approaches and the relationship between them.

Promoting the Standard Manual Alphabet in Schools

10. It is probably beyond the scope of the LEA to prescribe the school curriculum "to ensure that all pupils are taught the Standard Manual Alphabet" and on its own this would, arguably, provide very limited opportunities for increased "communicating with deaf people". However, if resources were to permit, a small number of schools might be invited to explore the possibilities of children learning about both BSL and finger spelling. Such an approach, involving deaf adults, would promote disability awareness without risking reaction from those schools who might see teaching finger spelling as an additional burden. While funding issues would need to be explored it is likely that such a project would be more feasible than a countywide scheme.
11. Should government funding become available, such a project would provide experience which would inform any decisions about future developments.

BSL Interpreters

12. Currently BSL interpreters are employed in Oxfordshire to assist deaf adults through a scheme managed by the Social and Health Care Directorate but funded jointly with Education and Health. There appears to be a national shortage of properly trained interpreters so actions by the RNID to help address that would be welcome.

RECOMMENDATION

13. The Executive is RECOMMENDED to consider in the light of the report what response to make to the issues raised in the motion referred by the Learning & Culture Scrutiny Committee relating to:

ROY SMITH
Acting Chief Education Officer

Background papers: none

Contact Officer: Mark Geraghty Head Sensory and Language Support Services Tel: 01865 875165

February 2003

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