Answers issued to Members on 4 June 2008

[R] signifies that the Member has declared an interest.
[W] signifies that the question was tabled in Welsh.

Contents

Questions to the Minister for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills

Questions to the Minister for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills

Janet Ryder (North Wales): Can the Minister detail the number of qualified Teachers of the Deaf employed in each Local Education Authority for the last year of recorded figures? (WAQ51812)

The Minister for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills (Jane Hutt): The most recent and robust information on teachers of the deaf is held by the General Teaching Council for Wales (GTCW) who have advised that that there are 108 qualified teachers of the deaf in Wales registered with them as at 2 June 2008.  A breakdown of this information by local education authority (LEA) is as follows:

More generally, in 2003 and 2004 the Welsh Assembly Government conducted audits of educational provision for those with hearing impairment, visual impairment and multi-sensory impairment (deaf blindness). The results of the audit suggested that there was disparity across Wales with regard to policies for intervention and levels of support available to children and young people with sensory impairments.

As a result, in 2005, the Welsh Assembly Government published quality standards for educational services for children and young people with hearing, visual or multi-sensory impairment, which were developed specifically to aid consistency of approach. The standards are used as benchmarks against which services provided can be evaluated.

The quality standards have been approved by Estyn, particularly as a self-evaluation tool for use by LEAs.  It is proposed to externally evaluate the use of the standards during 2009-10.

Furthermore, as a result of the audit, we became aware that a large proportion of teachers who, at the time, were holding the mandatory qualification (MQ) for teaching pupils with sensory impairment, would be of retirement age within the next ten years - hence the need to train additional teachers to meet pupils’ needs. The Welsh Assembly Government has worked in partnership with the University of Wales, Newport to ensure that new mandatory qualification courses are available for teachers of both the hearing impaired (HI) and the visually impaired (VI). In all, a total of £192,000 has been allocated by the Assembly Government for the three academic years from September 2006.  

We were particularly pleased that the HI mandatory qualification course was developed in collaboration with the Mary Hare Foundation in Berkshire, a world renowned Grammar School and centre of excellence for children and young people with hearing impairments.  

These courses commenced in September 2006 in which 24 teachers enrolled on to the Postgraduate Diploma - 12 for HI and 12 for VI.