Auditory Verbal Therapy

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

Thank you for stepping into the breach this morning, Dame Maria. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) for securing the important debate, and I pay tribute to AV UK for its work on supporting deaf children, children with hearing loss, and some of the families here today, who have had such a positive experience of auditory verbal therapy.

As the hon. Member said, auditory verbal therapy is an evidence-based approach, and I am grateful to her for setting out the evidence base for its effectiveness. I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) for setting out some of the detail of how the system for supporting deaf children and children with hearing loss works in Scotland.

There are an estimated 50,000 deaf children in the UK, with around 7,200 under the age of five. Given the right support and intervention, many deaf children can participate fully and thrive in mainstream schools, whether they choose to use spoken language, sign language or both. There is a particular responsibility to get our special educational needs and disabilities system of support right, especially by designing interventions to support children who need not suffer any other disadvantage in the education system if the support they need is provided appropriately from the start.

Unfortunately, as today’s debate has shown, that is not the case in many parts of the country. Research by the Education Policy Institute found a staggering attainment gap between deaf children and their peers. That gap already equates to 8.8 months of learning by key stage 1, and it grows throughout school to 17.5 months at the age of 16—almost a year and half of education. That translates into an average grade for GCSE English and maths that is 1.3 grades below the average grade for deaf children’s peers. Deaf children are also more likely to experience poor mental health, bullying and social exclusion, all posing further barriers to their education and personal development. Alongside each child are the parents and carers who all too often have to fight constantly for the support their child needs.

Although the number of deaf children in education has risen by more than 10,000 since 2011, the number of qualified teachers of the deaf in employment has fallen by 19%, according to the Consortium for Research into Deaf Education. Specialist teachers for the deaf and specialist teaching assistants perform vital work to help their students access education. I witnessed that on a recent visit to Jubilee Primary School in Lambeth, just outside my constituency, which benefits from a full-time teacher of the deaf. However, teachers of the deaf are facing ever-growing case loads, reducing the time they can spend with each individual child.

Labour wants to see a properly inclusive system that meets the needs of all children and young people, including deaf children and children with hearing loss. We have been clear that we would put inclusion at the heart of our education system, with a focus on providing the interventions that are needed earlier and on ensuring that school staff have the specialist skills they need to meet every child’s needs. It is also vital that families get the support they need as early as possible, before their children start school, to help them communicate with their children and to develop their children’s language and communication skills.

Help that is provided early in a child’s life can be transformative, avoiding the need for much greater support later, and helping more children to thrive in mainstream education. Across the country, guidance and support for parents varies greatly between local authorities. We know that deaf children in more disadvantaged areas experience a greater attainment gap than their peers elsewhere in the country. There is a wealth of low-cost interventions already being delivered in some parts of the country to give parents and families the skills they need to support their child’s development and communicate with them. This needs to happen everywhere. These include courses in British Sign Language offered by the National Deaf Children’s Society, and Auditory Verbal UK’s approach to developing spoken language through listening.

I know there are families and young people in the Gallery today who have really benefited from auditory verbal support. Labour wants to see the right support for every child, and it is important that we learn from evidence and best practice, and understand what is working for families in areas of the country that manage to achieve the very best outcomes. We are looking carefully at this, and we are looking at the wider framework of SEND support from early years throughout education, involving early intervention, especially with communication, speech and language skills. We are also looking at the skills available to professionals working in mainstream education and at how the Ofsted assessment framework for schools can be used to drive improved inclusivity across our system. Within a transformed framework for SEND support, we will look to ensure that evidence-based interventions are available wherever they are needed.

I want to use this opportunity to press the Minister on the wider issue of how the Government plan to improve inclusion in mainstream schools, as set out in the SEND and alternative provision improvement plan. As I have set out, the Opposition share the ambition to improve inclusion in the mainstream, but the Government have not set out a clear plan to achieve it. There is no workforce plan or strategy to ensure that schools have the specialist staff needed, including teachers of the deaf, while much of the plan will not come into effect until 2026, leaving families waiting three years longer before they will see any reform. It will be helpful to know what the Minister is doing now to address the vacancy gap for teachers of the deaf.

The Labour party is clear that in government we would put children first and at the heart of our programme, and break down the barriers that hold far too many back from thriving in education and building strong relationships, including deaf children. We would be working with professionals, children and families to deliver a SEND system that works to support the needs of every child.