Campaigning for deaf children

New strategy paper on education: what does it mean for deaf...
Campaigning for deaf children The Department for Children, Schools and Families love to strategise. If I had a Krispy Kreme doughnut for every strategy paper that's been published since I started this job, I would probably now be auditioning for the role of Jabba the Hutt in the next Star Wars film. Their latest strategy paper is called: Your [...]
Education Culture Wed, Jul 01 2009

Cinema access website up for top award
Campaigning for deaf children Fresh from winning a People's Choice award, Dean Rhodes-Brandon, the pioneer behind Your Local Cinema.com website are up for yet another award. This is one is a National Lottery Award for Best Arts Project. It would be great if they win. So if you want to help make it happen, you can vote online and [...]
Art and Storytelling Tue, Jun 30 2009

New sign language project launches
Campaigning for deaf children Back in February 2008, Malcolm Bruce MP, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Deafness in Westminster, asked Gordon Brown during Prime Minister's Questions about support for sign language users. Fast forward to today and a consortium of deaf organisations were formally launching the I-sign project and celebrating £800,000 of investment from the Departme...
Language Legal Culture Thu, Jun 25 2009

Will deaf people be able to access government scheme on...
Campaigning for deaf children I popped along to the Houses of Parliament yesterday – as you do – to a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Disability. This is a group of MPs and peers with a stated interest in disability issues who hold meetings once in a while. Yesterday's meeting was on the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children [...]
Education Culture Tue, Jun 23 2009

Deaf and disabled children denied access to basic NHS care
Campaigning for deaf children Every Disabled Child Matters (EDCM) have launched an important new campaign today about disabled children's access to health services. We know that many professionals work their socks off to help disabled children. But EDCM's report still makes for depressing reading, particular about the cavalier attitudes of some other professionals to the needs of chil...
Tech Culture Mon, Jun 22 2009

Support for deaf children post 16
Campaigning for deaf children I got an email earlier this week from a father of a deaf son, offering to act as a case study for NDCS campaigns. Case studies like this really help us demonstrate the case for action and help make our campaign asks more personal and real. As a campaigns officer, I come across lots of [...]
Higher Education Education Tech Legal Culture Fri, Jun 19 2009

What does the Government think of our acoustics campaign?
Campaigning for deaf children So whathas the Government's response been to our campaign on acoustics in schools? Well, some of it is probably unprintable. I'm fairly certain that officials would wish we would just go away. Our campaign has generated a fair amount of work for them. I feel their pain as an ex-civil servant myself. But then again, [...]
Education Legal Culture Wed, Jun 17 2009

Celebrity endorsement of NDCS’s acoustics campaign
Campaigning for deaf children In a quiet moment in the office many months back, I was daydreaming about how great it would be if we could get Kevin McCloud, design expert from the Grand Designs programme off the telly, to give us a celebrity endorsement for our campaign on acoustics in new school buildings and speak a bit about [...]
Media Education Tech Culture Fri, Jun 12 2009

NDCS uncovers damning evidence on acoustics in schools
Campaigning for deaf children Even though the Government is aiming to build or refurbish thousands of new schools, it has done very little to survey schools for their listening environments. It was always a bit of stumbling block for NDCS's campaign. Although we had lots of parents and professionals telling us about their own experiences of new classrooms with [...]
Education Tech Thu, Jun 11 2009

Big shindig at Parliament to demand action on acoustics
Campaigning for deaf children God, I'm glad today is over. Today, we went off to Parliament for a parliamentary event to promote our Sounds good? campaign for better acoustics in schools. The event was hosted by John Bercow MP, a respected Conservative MP, who has made it his mission to ensure that the needs of children with special educational [...]
Media Language Education Tech Legal Tue, Jun 09 2009

Hearing impaired units – helping deaf children be deaf?
Campaigning for deaf children I went along to visit a hearing impairment unit within a large mainstream school in east London last week, something I don't do enough of. The school itself was pretty depressing – a large inner city school with a crumbling facade and with two policeman on site at all times. Crikey. But the unit itself [...]
Language Education Sun, Jun 07 2009

Data on how deaf children are doing at school – now out
Campaigning for deaf children Last week, while I was sunning myself on holiday, NDCS published the data given to us by the Department for Children, Schools and Families on how deaf children do in their GCSEs in England in 2008. They don't make for pleasant reading: Only 28% of deaf children got five GCSEs at grades A* to C [...]
Education Legal Mon, Jun 01 2009

Have you contacted your MP yet? Reminder no.3
Campaigning for deaf children The campaign for better acoustics in schools is reaching a critical phase. In around a month, we will be hosting a parliamentary event where we will be asking MPs to come along and listen to a simulation of what bad acoustics sound like to a deaf child. And we will also be publishing our findings [...]
Education Tech Legal Fri, May 22 2009

Are we too nice to cinemas?
Campaigning for deaf children There was an interesting comment (see, I do read them!) to my blog about subtitled spectacles suggest that we're too nice to cinemas and that deaf people should be demanding the right to watch subtitles films at convenient times, not just at quiet times when hearing people don't want to go. On the one hand, [...]
Media Tech Culture Tue, May 19 2009

Data on how deaf children are doing at school
Campaigning for deaf children Apparently, there are lies, damned lies and statistics. And then there's a new category: figures relating how deaf children get on at school. The Department for Children, Schools and Families have given us the latest figures on the attainment of deaf children and we intend to publish them next Tuesday with some accompanying analysis and [...]
Education Thu, May 14 2009

Deaf power at the cinema after another subtitles cock-up
Campaigning for deaf children I went along to see a subtitled showing of the new Star Trek film last night with my fellow deaf trekkie geek friend. As is so often the case, it was the only showing in central-ish London this week and not at a particularly convenient time of 5.30pm on a Monday. But I was so [...]
Media Language Tech Culture Tue, May 12 2009

FM systems a cure-all for bad acoustics?
Campaigning for deaf children One of the nice things about our campaign for schools that sound good is the positive response it's got from other organisations and from individual parents and teachers of the deaf. We seem to have struck a chord and that lots of people feel that our classrooms are awfully noisy places in which our children [...]
Education Tech Fri, May 08 2009

Gagging charities “political” messages
Campaigning for deaf children Not contenting with doing a review of parental confidence in provision for children, being chair of the Special Educational Consortium and Executive Director of Advocacy and Policy at RNID, Brian Lamb spoke out last week about silly laws that affect charities. Specifically, charities are not allowed to do adverts on social issues relating to their [...]
Audism Culture Thu, May 07 2009

Subtitled spectacles
Campaigning for deaf children I was at a meeting a fortnight ago of a group that brings together cinema industry guys and representatives from the disability sector to talk about access to the cinema. It was a useful meeting and the highlight came right at end when the man from yourlocalcinema.com mentioned some new technology - subtitled spectacles. The [...]
Media Language Tech Tue, May 05 2009

Primary curriculum review fails deaf children?
Campaigning for deaf children Sir Jim Rose's review of the primary curriculum was published yesterday. It promises fairly fundamental changes to the way young children learn at schools. And with one in five children having a special educational need, surely the report will have lots to say about how such children can learn effectively in the classroom? Nope. Nada. [...]
Culture Education Fri, May 01 2009

Catch 22 as NDCS challenges Government officials on...
Campaigning for deaf children Attended a meeting at the Department for Children, Schools and Families today about acoustics. It went well... but no major breakthrough... Yet. Some small steps are being made which bring us closer to testing acoustics in all new schools. But nothing is yet on the table that would guarantee that all schools would definitely be [...]
Education Tech Thu, Apr 30 2009

New laws on equality
Campaigning for deaf children The Equality Bill has been published today. It's a new key piece of legislation that aims to streamline all existing discrimination legislation into one document. It's already pretty controversial and it looks like it's going to be a hot potato for the Government going forward. I've already heard a rumour that one peer is already [...]
Legal Mon, Apr 27 2009

Have you contacted your MP yet? Reminder no.2
Campaigning for deaf children When we met with Iain Wright, the Minister responsible for building regulations, earlier this week, he revealed that he had received a letter from one of his constituents about our campaign for schools that sound good. Was that you? If so, then it was fantastically helpful. We're sure it helped him realise that acoustics in [...]
Education Tech Legal Culture Fri, Apr 24 2009

The readout: NDCS meetings with Ministers and MPs
Campaigning for deaf children All of our scheduled meetings with the three Ministers and a MP went ahead. And we got good results from them all! I've allowed myself a tub of Pringles to celebrate. Firstly, the meeting with Phil Hope and Ann Keen, Ministers at the Department for Health: they were concerned about failings in the delivery of [...]
Legal Culture Thu, Apr 23 2009

NDCS meetings with Ministers and MPs
Campaigning for deaf children I will need to get my suit out this week... We try to meet with MPs regularly to keep them informed of our campaigns but this week, the NDCS campaigns team has an unusually busy week of meetings with 3 Ministers and 1 senior MP. We may as well camp out at Westminster. Firstly, we [...]
Legal Culture Mon, Apr 20 2009

MPs debate deaf children and the Apprenticeships, Skills,...
Campaigning for deaf children MPs have now gone through the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning (ASCL) Bill, line by line, and considered all of the amendments. Such was their determination to do it, they ended up staying up in Parliament until well past midnight. This left me with an image of MPs sitting in a room with their pyjamas, [...]
Education Tech Legal Fri, Apr 17 2009

NDCS supports call for action on inclusion
Campaigning for deaf children As well as being an opportunity to eat lots of easter eggs, Easter is traditionally the time of the year when teachers get together for their various conferences. The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Woman Teachers or NASUWT have been busy this week debating the difficulties teachers face in making inclusion of children with [...]
Language Education Culture Wed, Apr 15 2009

Shameless deaf character says goodbye
Campaigning for deaf children So the deaf character on Shameless said farewell last night in typical Shameless fashion - by bludgeoning his Dad to death. I guess it just goes to show that deaf people can be troubled psychotic murderers too though maybe I won't try and add that to NDCS's key messages. So that now's he gone, what [...]
Media Culture Wed, Apr 15 2009

Have you contacted your MP yet? Reminder #1
Campaigning for deaf children I mentioned that we've launched a call for action from our members and supporters to contact their MP to call for action on acoustics in schools. Our website is magic and makes it really easy to do this. Have you done it yet? Don't have time? It really won't take more than five minutes. You could [...]
Education Tech Culture Thu, Apr 09 2009

Big award for pioneering young deaf person
Campaigning for deaf children Saw a story today which warmed my cynical jaded heart from This is Local London news. The young deaf person, Dean Rhodes-Brandon, behind yourlocalcinema.com website - which is a lifeline to all those wanting to know where and when they can watch films with subtitles - has won an award for his efforts, which was [...]
Media Culture Thu, Apr 09 2009

Taking action on acoustics after government disasppointment
Campaigning for deaf children So did we get a quadruple chocolate cookie cake? Nope. After dropping a big hint that it would, the Government didn't even come to the party with a sponge cake. Government officials have now indicated that our main ask for our Sounds good? campaign of pre-completion acoustic testing is not going to be taken forward [...]
Tech Legal Culture Tue, Apr 07 2009

Lame response from Laming review on social care
Campaigning for deaf children American research suggests that deaf children are three to four times more likely to be abused than other children. And research from the University of Manchester suggests that deaf children are invisible on the social care radar. So you would think that a major review into child protection arrangements in England would have something to [...]
Legal Culture Fri, Mar 20 2009

Government drops hint on acoustics testing…
Campaigning for deaf children This week, the Government suggested it might be poised to introduce pre-completion acoustic testing in all new schools. If this is the case, then one of the campaign aims for NDCS's Sounds good? campaign will have been met. Yay! This came about through an answer to a parliamentary question where the Minster for Schools and [...]
Education Tech Legal Thu, Mar 19 2009

Trying to change the law on Ofsted
Campaigning for deaf children I mentioned that we're trying to get the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill amended so that Ofsted can't relax the inspection process for “good/outstanding” schools unless the inspector knows their stuff about deafness, and unless provision for children with special educational needs is also good/outstanding. Well, we've...
Education Legal Mon, Mar 16 2009

NDCS interview with Shameless deaf actor
Campaigning for deaf children The NDCS website has an interview with Louis Kissaun, the actor who plays Danny, the new deaf character in Shameless. Has some interesting comments on what it was like being deaf, working on the Shameless set. No exclusives on what his character's hidden agenda is though... Seems like a great role model for deaf children [...]
Media Art and Storytelling Culture Fri, Mar 13 2009

Breakthrough on BBC online video news stories
Campaigning for deaf children I've now had not one but two replies from the BBC about my complaint about BBC news online putting up online video stories about deaf children without subtitles or a transcript. The guy was open, helpful, apologetic and seemed as frustrated as I was that this had happened again. The explanation? Regional reports and producers [...]
Tech Fri, Mar 13 2009

Deaf children and Ofsted: inspecting the inspectors
Campaigning for deaf children Have been spending a lot of time recently on the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill - which I call the ASCL Bill for short, mainly because I can never hit the ‘c' bit in Apprenticeships without falling over my words, and sometimes literally just falling over. It's the first time as a campaigns officer [...]
Education Culture Tue, Mar 10 2009

Update - Shameless: new deaf character on the telly!
Campaigning for deaf children Make sure you watch Shameless on Channel 4 on Tuesday evening at 10pm to see the new deaf character who will be sticking around for a few episodes. The character, Danny, and the actor playing him, Louis Kissaun, both use British Sign Language as their main language. The Guardian had a short interview with the [...]
Media Culture Sun, Mar 08 2009

DCSF consultations convulsions vol. 3: the primary...
Campaigning for deaf children Another day, another consultation... The latest is the independent review into the primary curriculum Sir Jim Rose. An interim report was published late last year and the deadline for comments passed over the weekend. So what did Sir Jim Rose have to say about children with special educational needs and the primary curriculum? Given [...]
Audism Education Mon, Mar 02 2009

Shameless: new deaf character on the telly!
Campaigning for deaf children One of the plus sides of my job is that I sometimes find out some juicy gossip or really exciting news. The downside is often I'm not allowed to talk about it for ages without fear of being on a receiving end of a visit from from the Gallaghers from Shameless. Happily, I'm now allowed [...]
Media Art and Storytelling Fri, Feb 27 2009

BBC online video news stories: that deja vu feeling…
Campaigning for deaf children Today, I am mostly experiencing deja vu. This is because the BBC news online have put up another online video news story about a deaf child... without subtitles or a transcript. Like last time when this happened, I am quietly outraged. This is a story about deafness - apparently about hearing dogs for the deaf [...]
Media Language Art and Storytelling Tech Tue, Feb 24 2009

DCSF consultation convulsions vol. 2: Children and Young...
Campaigning for deaf children A second consulation that I've been working on is the Children and Young People's Workforce paper. This is the Department for Children's Schools and Families (DCSF)'s attempt to set out its long term strategy on the workforce in all aspects. It has attracted attention for recommending the creation of a social care workforce taskforce, following...
Education Legal Mon, Feb 23 2009

Sounds good? An update on the acoustics campaign
Campaigning for deaf children So we've got a name for our campaign on acoustics - Sounds Good? - what else have we been up to? Here's a brief run down: 1) My boss attended a conference in Manchester on building schools which apparently turned out to be a great networking opportunity with various local authority officials, designers and builders. Worryingly, [...]
Media Tech Culture Fri, Feb 20 2009

DCSF consultation convulsions vol. 1: 21st century schools
Campaigning for deaf children Every now and then, the Department for Children, Schools and Families suffers a consultations convulsion. Three months later, it's poor little me paying the price as one of my responsibilities at NDCS to co-ordinate consultation responses and often write our response. It's good to get the public's views. It's less good to bludgeon people to [.....
Education Tue, Feb 17 2009

Thinking up a name for a campaign on acoustics…
Campaigning for deaf children NDCS has long been planning a campaign on the quality of acoustics in schools, but one of the trickier things has been trying to think up a campaign name for it. It had to be snappy and punchy and memorable - which ruled out anything with the word “acoustics” in it. We initially zoned in [...]
Education Tech Culture Mon, Feb 16 2009

Update on Slumdog Subtitles
Campaigning for deaf children I mentioned in my last blog that I emailed the cinema chain responsible for showing a subtitled Slumdog Millionaire in Fulham... with no subtitles for the first five minutes to complain. The cinema emailed back to apologise and say it took “customer care” seriously. It sent another email later to say this was being investigated [...]
Tech Legal Sun, Feb 15 2009

Slumdog subtitles at the cinema for deaf people
Campaigning for deaf children I popped over to Fulham on Sunday afternoon to see a film I had been dying to see for ages - Slumdog Millionaire. Despite being one of the most popular films around at the moment, this was the first opportunity I'd had to go and see the film at a time which wouldn't require me [...]
Media Tech Tue, Feb 10 2009

Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill hits...
Campaigning for deaf children The Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill was introduced to Parliament yesterday in what the wonks call it's ‘First Reading'. It used to be called the Children, Skills and Learning Bill but clearly someone decided that it wasn't catchy enough and combined it with another draft Bill on apprenticeships. I will henceforth call the ne...
Language Education Legal Thu, Feb 05 2009

Newborn hearing screening programme on See Hear
Campaigning for deaf children See Hear did a piece about the newborn hearing screening programme this week, which you can watch online using BBC i-player here. Some compelling case studies from families in London showing why newborn hearing screening is so important. NDCS is continuing to campaign on this to make sure deaf babies around the UK don't fall [...]
Culture Thu, Jan 29 2009

More money for phonics… but what about deaf children?
Campaigning for deaf children On Monday, the Department for Children, Schools and Families announced £9m funding for teaching phonics in the classroom. Phonics is something I've blogged on before. I have no beef with the whole concept of phonics but I still fail to see how a teaching method based on listening of sounds will work for severely and [...]
Language Education Thu, Jan 29 2009