Hearing Impairment Provision - Information

Hearing Impairment Provision

At Pelham Primary School we are very lucky to have the only hearing impaired provision for children in Bexley. This supports children with severe or profound hearing losses and it has places for eighteen children. Children use hearing aids or cochlear implants.

Children are allocated places by Bexley’s Children and Young People’s Services and the children will be allocated if they currently have a Statement of Special Educational Needs. Children can start early within the nursery with a Priority Nursery Place.

Pelham School promotes positive attitudes between hearing and hearing impaired children and takes pride in the inclusive attitude of our whole school community. An understanding of deafness and its implications contributes to an inclusive environment and helps build positive attitudes. Deaf Awareness sessions are provided to staff in the school on appointment and throughout their time at Pelham School. Hearing children also have regular deaf awareness sessions from the nursery right up until Year 6 which cover areas such as communication strategies, hearing aids, signing vocabulary, signing songs, deaf role models and what it means to be deaf. We feel that this enriches the whole school community. Workshops are offered to parents each year.

The provision has a Total Communication Policy; by this we mean we use the communication approach appropriate to the child. This could be spoken and written English, speech reading, Signed English, Signed Supported English, British Sign Language, finger-spelling, natural gesture, pictures or symbols.

The children are part of the mainstream classes and take part in all aspects of school life. There are two Teachers of the Deaf in the school who offer specialist support to the children especially with language and literacy work. A team of specialist Teaching Assistants from the provision offer support within classes where appropriate Specialist support may take the form of group activities, individual work, and reverse inclusion lessons (when a group of hearing children from the child’s class are taught by the Teacher of the Deaf alongside the deaf child).

There is a close working relationship between the school and external providers for example, the Advisory Teacher of the Deaf, local Audiology, tertiary Audiology, Cochlear Implant Centres and Educational Psychologists. Two Specialist Speech and Language Therapists visit the school for a combined total of three days a week. Children are seen at least twice a week. This may take the form of group or individual sessions. Work is then followed up within the provision by staff.

The children have access to specialist equipment to aid listening skills within the classroom environment and around the school.