University of Edinburgh
 

Deaf Students in Scottish Higher Education

Chapter Six: Admissions and Professional Training Courses

Some students had a negative experience of the admissions process. One key area for concern is that, in some cases, acceptance onto a course appears to be directly related to the level of support envisaged. One deaf applicant reported that she deliberately submitted her application early in the hope and expectation that appropriate access support could be arranged. However, the interviewers explained that they would not be able to give a response until the application had been examined by ‘the Special Needs Section’. The applicant then checked the website of the university and noted a statement that ‘the entry decision for disabled students is made concurrently with the application going to Special Needs’. There is some question here about the interpretation of the term ‘concurrently’: in practice, this appeared to mean that a decision would only be made once the Special Needs Section had commented upon the feasibility of providing appropriate support. The student comments:

"I went for my interview and found that it wasn’t a bad interview, but there were a few things that they said during the interview. Like they were saying before we started, ‘Okay, now we’ll send your application form to Special Needs…But they would not tell me whether I had a place on the course or not. So they sent the application to Special Needs and then they said, ‘When we get the application back and we see how much support you need, we will work out whether it’s feasible’. So I was sitting there and getting angrier and angrier…This is why I’m angry about it all because they don’t want to be flexible. I think that’s what it is. I was quite shocked at first because I thought a lot of barriers had been broken down with regard to deaf and hard of hearing people in general and I was quite shocked, you know, to come across this. And I was really shocked in the interview when they talked about ‘feasibility’."

HEIs may find themselves in something of quandary regarding admissions. The SENDA legislation requires that institutions not treat deaf people (‘disabled people’ in the wording of the Act) less favourably than others: this applies to admissions, as well as to other aspects of HE provision. This requirement should mean that an individual is accepted into the HEI based upon their ability and potential, as well as on the appropriateness of the course of study for that person. The nature of the access requirements should not affect whether or not the person is accepted. However, as we can see from the above student testimony, information from staff and indeed the public documentation available on websites, this approach is not always followed. One example of the information on websites, from one of the largest institutions, can be seen below:

"Applicants will be invited to make contact with the Disability Team to discuss and consider fully any support requirements they may have and how these can be best met. No applicant will be refused a place on the grounds of disability at the University before this process of consultation has occurred."

This statement is somewhat ambiguous, but it does seem to imply that deaf people could be rejected because the support anticipated is beyond the scope of the institution to provide. However, if the HEI accepts the person on their own terms, as a fully equal applicant, they may then discover that the institution does not in fact have the resources to provide appropriate support. This may not simply be a question of the HEI having insufficient funding, but rather that appropriately trained and qualified personnel are unavailable. This is clearly the case, for example, in relation to BSL/English interpreters and electronic notetakers.

There is a major issue here: it appears that Government is passing legislation which places a legal requirement on HEIs which they simply cannot meet. The obvious corollary is for Government to fund a major initiative with respect to the training of access personnel such as electronic notetakers and BSL/English interpreters.

Professional qualifications: Case study: Teachers

There may also be specific admissions issues with respect to professional qualifications. We can note the following from a different university’s website:

" *** offers an extensive range of programmes leading to professional qualifications for example in Social Work, Nursing and Physiotherapy. Admissions staff will maintain a regular dialogue with the Professional and Validating Bodies such as those for the professions allied to medicine. This will inform the above process and determine fairly whether a student’s disability will prevent them from fulfilling fitness for practice and other criteria."

It is likely that most other universities operate in a similar fashion. However, it is not clear what evidence is sought by universities from those organisations most directly involved with deaf people or from deaf people themselves.

During this research project, evidence was given by deaf students who are currently undertaking teacher education courses. It is worth giving some specific focus to issues raised by such students in order to highlight the more general issue of deaf people accessing professional courses and qualifications.

The experiences of deaf student teachers

A number of deaf students who are currently undertaking teacher education, either a PGCE or a BEd, gave face-to-face interviews or provided written evidence. There are particular issues facing such students, because not only do they have to access the academic and professional input, but they also have to demonstrate how they will manage a class of pupils and engage in appropriate teaching activities. Surprisingly, there seems to be very little in the way of advice or information relating to the possible strategies such students might use: they themselves tend to be the ones bringing forward ideas and suggestions. There also appears to be a lack of any network of support which would allow such students (and indeed the staff) to learn from previous experience. The following student made use of English as her preferred language:

"I’d like to say that the University were very quick offering me help, as I said before, but not one of them could put me in touch with another teacher with a hearing impairment, which I really wanted. I wanted to talk to a teacher who could offer me strategies on how to cope in the placement, because when I went into the placement I was really scared about how I would cope. And, you know, I got on the internet, trying to find someone to speak to and I wish they could have offered me that, I wished they could have. Although I have to say they were very supportive."

Although this student stressed that “I think I have got self-belief (that’s very important) that I’m a teacher”, she nevertheless felt considerable stress, partly because of how she perceived that others might view her:

"But I still feel a few of the students think ‘How’s she going to cope in the classroom?’, ‘How’s she going to manage?’, you know, and I can understand that; I really understand that. Because I think ‘How am I going to cope?’."

Sometimes teachers were placed in circumstances they did not think ideal. The student below wore hearing aids, so the noisy conditions were particularly difficult for her:

"I found in my first placement, there were thirty-three Primary Six children in a temporary classroom. The school was being — part of it — was being rebuilt, and they were all put into a small room and there was no room for their books and their books were kept out in the corridor. So every time they needed books, all the children would leave and the doors would open and they would go in and out, and I felt, for me, it wasn’t an ideal room. And I was surprised at the University’s placing me there. I don’t think that my success as a teacher would have come from that environment, although in my second placement there were twenty-five children in a good size room and I did so well."

One student on a PGCE course did not feel it appropriate to tell the children on her teaching placement that she had a hearing impairment. She had perhaps given hints:

"And I told the children, you know, ‘If you need my attention, just tap me on the arm’ and it worked, and they didn’t know that I had a hearing problem. I taught them how to do the alphabet in sign language, and that last day I wore my hair up for that day, and they were shocked."

She explains her thinking as follows:

"If we had told them — I’m slightly concerned about the parents of the pupil. They might not like their children having a teacher with a hearing impairment, and given the negative attitude to people with a hearing impairment, I’m slightly worried about that. Now I feel like I’ve got another battle on my hands too."

There are clearly issues of identity here in terms of how different people see themselves. This student did not wish to be seen as a ‘deaf teacher’, while others felt very positive about having a ‘deaf’ identity. Some students also commented on the attitudes and assumptions of HE staff: “Some of them were even surprised that a deaf person can drive a car. It made me wonder if they had a clue about deaf people”. Such misconceptions may also influence the attitudes of lecturers towards placements. Sometimes deaf students felt that an assumption was made that deaf students would want ultimately to teach deaf pupils. There is a strong view within the Deaf community and in deaf organisations that deaf people can play a particularly important role as deaf teachers of deaf children:

"Deaf teachers are able to fulfill this function most appropriately because deaf children need teachers who have high expectations of them and with whom they can communicate effectively."
(Susan Daniels, Chief Executive, National Deaf Children’s Society: quoted in McGilp, 1999)

Certainly some deaf students wished to follow this route, but others stressed that this should not be an automatic assumption and in some cases, individuals wished to teach the full range of pupils. There were also differences in views amongst deaf student teachers as to whether it was or was not appropriate to undertake placements in schools with deaf pupils. The following student explicitly wanted to work with deaf pupils, but she had to “…find suitable schools with deaf units [for myself] …but for my last placement, I was placed in a mainstream school with no deaf pupils”.

The access arrangements did not always make it possible for deaf student teachers to make the most of teaching placements. One BSL user was given access primarily through the use of two unqualified BSL/English ‘interpreters’: the role they were fulfilling was that of an interpreter, although they were labeled ‘communicators’ presumably because of their lack of interpreting qualifications. The deaf student suggests that their subject specific knowledge was limited and that the “…standard of communication support is not high enough to give the level of support I require in a mainstream school”.

This same deaf person also explained that the insufficiencies of the communicators had a negative effect on her experience of placement:

"The communicators imposed a time limit on the duration of interpreting in one day… one communicator said she couldn't cope with voice-over for more than one lesson per day. Consequently I lost the opportunity to teach another two lessons per day. This occurred on three separate days… I was without communication support for two days in my first placement, four days on my second placement and three days already in my final placement. No other interpreters could be found as replacements."

In this particular case, the student was unable to deliver lessons she felt fully prepared for because the access provision was not in place. When asked about this example, Doreen Mair, Director of the Scottish Association of Sign Language Interpreters suggested that a qualified interpreter would not have laid down such conditions. The student also commented that:

"Because the communicators are not of a sufficiently high standard, and due to their lack of subject knowledge, I have had to make additional preparation for each lesson in order to provide the communicators with explanatory notes."

This is another example of deaf students having to undertake additional work because of the presence of staff whose primary purpose is to provide access. It should be said that the student recognised that the University concerned and the Disability staff had made strenuous efforts to employ appropriately qualified interpreters: the problem lay beyond the scope of the institutions themselves to fully resolve.

However, there were positive aspects of this student’s placement activities. She was able to carry out a project in relation to the type of access support given to the deaf children in different mainstream environments. This piece of work allowed the deaf student to contribute to thinking on access provision in the schools concerned and to alert her hearing peers to some of the issues within the teaching course itself. She was also able to demonstrate the value of deaf perceptions on access issues to her peers on the education course.

One further example of a negative experience was that of a student who was denied a placement in a particular mainstream school. The HEI supported the student in wishing to be placed in the school, but she was rejected by the school because the school incorporated a Unit for deaf children where the policy was totally oral and the student used BSL. It is probably a technical question as to whether this was unlawful in terms of SENDA, given that schools are not obliged to take students on placement. However, the student and HEI staff concerned felt that it was discriminatory, with echoes of ‘hiding away’ deaf people.

It is worth adding here that the current Deaf Education qualification in Scotland, as with its counterparts in England, is a part-time modular course. This programme provides a specialised qualification in teaching deaf children. There is a recognised need for, and shortage of, deaf people who have this qualification. Unlike the English situation, however, Scottish students attending are not eligible for DSA; therefore funding has to be found through other means. This usually requires a great deal of work on the part of Disability Advisors since the costs involved can be considerable. Thus this is another potential barrier to deaf people accessing an HE course, in this case to qualify as teachers of deaf children.

Key points

There is evidence which suggests that deaf students can be accepted for a university place conditional upon the HEI being able to provide appropriate access; this is against the spirit of SENDA legislation, which implies that an individual should normally be accepted on the basis of their ability and potential — that is, regardless of access needs.

There may be more specific admission and access issues in relation to requirements for particular professional qualifications.

Deaf students on part-time modular postgraduate courses, such as those leading to qualifications in teaching deaf children, are at a disadvantage compared to their English counterparts, as they are not eligible for DSA.

Deaf students may require considerable levels of access services when out on placements or traineeships.

Recommendations

6.1 HEIs should accept deaf students on an equal basis to other students and in line with SENDA legislation. This is likely to increase the level of access/support services required within individual institutions, and thus have knock-on implications for DSA funding at a national level and for the need to train more access personnel.

6.2 HEIs should liaise with organisations most involved with deaf people when making decisions about whether deafness would prevent a deaf student from fulfilling professional ‘fitness for practice’.

6.3 All postgraduate students should be eligible for DSA, including those on part-time modular courses, such as those which train teachers to become specialised teachers of deaf children.

6.4 Where courses require placements or traineeships, the HEI Disability Office should liaise with the placement/traineeship provider and the deaf student about the level of support to be provided for this, and consider whether local Deaf Awareness training should be offered in advance.