Educational support for deaf children is in “complete disarray” with the number of specialist teachers falling 14 per cent since 2011 despite rising numbers of deaf children, a survey has claimed. Research by the Consortium for Research in Deaf Education (Cride) found that while the number of deaf children in England has risen 31 per cent since 2011 to 45,631 the number of full-time equivalent specialist teachers employed as of January 2017 had fallen by 148 to 914 in the same period.
The decline means that the average specialist teacher supported 61 children in 2017 compared with 49 in 2015, but in some local authorities caseloads were found to be significantly higher. In 15 per cent of local authorities there was just one specialist teacher per 100 deaf students and in one council the average caseload was 253 children. Read more.
