Dalziel High doesn’t have a hearing impairment unit. That might come as a surprise to those who could have sworn there’s been one at the school for decades, who have distinct memories of reading in the local paper about its pupils’ achievements, who might even know people who went to the unit. And yet, it doesn’t exist.

What Dalziel High in Motherwell, North Lanarkshire, does have is an HID: a hearing impairment department. And this, apparently subtle, difference is about more than tricksy semantics - the favoured moniker echoes the school’s entire philosophy around pupils with hearing difficulties.

“I think one of the main things that has helped all our pupils is the fact that they are involved in all aspects of the school, from S1 [on],” says Jacqui Agnew, depute head with special responsibility for support for learning at the school, which has a roll of about 1,000. “We are fully inclusive, and consider ourselves to be a department rather than a unit.”

Most pupils come from Glencairn Primary, also in Motherwell, which Agnew says puts deaf pupils at the heart of school life, like all their peers, right from P1.

By the time they arrive at Dalziel High, “they are used to being with hearing and deaf peers … they develop friendships with both hearing and deaf pupils”.

This sense of integration - praised in the school’s most recent inspection report in December - is why staff and pupils baulk at the idea of a “unit”, with its suggestion of separateness. The three boxy rooms of the HID are, in many ways, simply like maths, English or PE classrooms: HID is a subject option just like any other that the school’s 19 pupils with hearing impairments can take in their timetable for a few periods a week (although some form of support is still provided to those who choose not to do so).

Indeed, it is not just pupils with hearing impairments who appear at the HID - if another pupil turns up looking for a bit of extra help from the 11 staff in the department, they will not be turned away.

“We’re not like, ‘No, no, you can’t come because you don’t have a cochlear implant’,” says Yvonne Savage, who job-shares with Agnew. And Savage believes that this inclusive approach helps to build a sense of empathy and understanding that “filters out into the whole school community”.

The HID was established at the school in 1976, when the understanding and empathy that the education system showed to pupils who needed extra support often fell far short of what is expected today. Now, pupils and staff say that there is little - if any - stigma or shame attached to being deaf.

“The young people love to talk about being deaf because they’re very proud of it,” says Savage. Indeed, she smiles at the memory of two S1 pupils - one with auditory processing disorder, the other who has a cochlear implant - addressing peers in a health and wellbeing class about the reasons for deafness: “I couldn’t get them to stop talking.”

Troubling landscape

However, it’s hard to escape the notion that, even in these apparently more enlightened times, the school’s HID is an oasis in a more troubling landscape.

Anecdotally, deaf pupils at Dalziel High tell of their shock at meeting pupils educated elsewhere who barely seem to do any exams. And, while there is not a wealth of research about deaf students in Scotland and the UK more widely, what does exist makes for uncomfortable reading.

For example, a University of Edinburgh report in 2013, titled Post‐-school Transitions of People who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing, found that these young people were significantly less likely to be employed than peers with no additional support needs and that, in workplaces, there “seemed to be little awareness of the communication needs of people who were hard of hearing”.

In 2015, research by the University of Manchester, titled Deaf Young People in Further Education, found that “while further education is the most common destination for deaf young people leaving school, there is evidence that it does not serve many of them well”.

The researchers stressed that this “cannot be explained simply by deaf young people entering FE with considerably lower qualifications than other learners”. And added that, in some cases, “local authorities are steering young people and their parents to the least expensive and most local provision, without due consideration to whether it is the most suitable or effective for the individual deaf young person”.

The research warned of a lack of support before students entered FE and, even if they did make it that far, there was a less-than-healthy view of their capabilities. The educational choices available were “very limited, whether because of limited communication support, low expectations of others or limited vision of what deaf young people ‘usually do’ ”.

And, according to the National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) in Scotland, we cannot even reassure ourselves with the notion that at least everything is going in the right direction.

“We know that, with the right support, deaf children can achieve the same as their hearing peers,” says policy and campaigns officer Lois Drake. “That’s why specialist support from teachers of the deaf can prove to be a lifeline for many deaf learners. It’s vital that this specialist workforce is protected to ensure deaf children get the support they need to reach their full potential.”

The NDCS has raised concerns about cuts to specialist support for deaf children in the classroom: unlike Dalziel High’s community, 87 per cent of deaf pupils attend mainstream schools in Scotland where they may be the only deaf child. The most recent figures from the Consortium for Research into Deaf Education show that almost a quarter of specialist teachers of the deaf in Scotland have been lost over the past seven years, while almost half of those who remain are expected to retire within 10 to 15 years.

‘Incredible awareness’

Back at Dalziel High, however, Savage says that there is “incredible awareness” among staff about the needs of pupils with hearing impairments (see box, page 18). Specially trained teachers - who pursue master’s-level study that can take up to five years - populate the HID, and they all bring expertise from previous roles, including secondary subject specialisms and primary teaching.

The school gets pupils to complete questionnaires about their preferences for the learning environment. Savage says that you cannot, for example, determine the loudness in a room through a catch-all, objective measure: it depends on individual perception.

Another teacher of the deaf at Dalziel High, Pamela Airlie - who also teaches English - has become acutely aware of the particular challenges deaf pupils have in acquiring language. Partly, this is because they cannot organically absorb language around them in the same ways as their peers, whether that’s on the radio, in casual conversation or in the hubbub of a school bus.

“Everything they’ve got, they have to be taught,” says Airlie.

All staff stress, however, that the range of support required is broad: there can a big difference, for example, between children who had a cochlear implant before and after the age of 4, because the early years are so important for language acquisition.

Punctuation can be “really difficult” to grasp when you struggle to hear pauses between words and subtle changes in the tone of voice, according to Airlie. And, if pupils do not get the right help to master this, “they’re just looking at a page and spending so much time trying to process decoding the words that they’re not reaching the meaning”.

All Dalziel pupils get a “reader”, who helps them to read exam papers. But, generally, it is up to the individual what level of support they receive - a point highlighted in December’s Education Scotland inspection report. Some come to the department for mentoring, others simply receive the few hours a week of in-class support that is available to all young people with hearing impairment. The inspection report notes that HID staff “know the learners very well” and that the pupils “feel listened to and valued”.

The HID’s work has also been helped by technological advances. In 2014, a Tes Scotland feature on the education of deaf pupils found that, after young people became accustomed to a certain level of support in school, their progress often stalled if they then went on to university, where the same technology might not be in place.

Even in the past five years, however, Dalziel High staff say that this has become less of an issue, as technology is now less expensive and more portable. It has become easier, for example, to take notes in university lectures.

Savage has worked at the HID for eight years, and recently stumbled across a doorstep-like “visual dictionary” that staff and pupils used to have to drag around the school. Clearing out some cupboards, staff also found huge microphones that have become defunct. “I didn’t know if I could even have lifted [one of those],” says Savage.

‘Don’t assume too much’

Attainment figures show the success of deaf pupils at Dalziel High: they consistently gain more and higher qualifications than other pupils in Scotland with hearing impairments. One pupil, Alistair, thrives in physics and maths but says he struggles with English and needed the support of the HID: “I can say, without a doubt, I would not have passed National 5 English [without it].”

Such success can, however, lead to the unwary teacher being caught off guard. “Our big thing is not to forget they’re deaf because they cope so well - don’t assume too much,” says Savage, citing one “amazing” N5 pupil. Airlie adds that, despite this pupil’s clear ability, “the minute he looks down [from a lesson], he could lose the thread”, and a relentless requirement to pay attention can be “very tiring”.

The school’s awareness of the level of support required, and attention to detail around each pupil’s specific needs, mean that smooth transition - from primary to secondary and from secondary to post-school education - is critical. Dalziel staff spend two years working on each pupil’s transition before they actually move on. So, for primary pupils, that starts in P6.

Education Scotland’s inspectors report that HID pupils “consistently move on to positive sustained destinations when they leave school”. Ask Agnew for one example of a pupil whose progress was particularly memorable and she reels off a dozen, among them a civil engineer, a pharmacist who works at Boots, a primary teacher, a DJ in Ibiza, a lead statistician with the Scottish government, a swimmer in the Deaflympics, and a “very quiet and unassuming boy” who now has his own car business.

A Scottish Parliament debate held on 28 February ahead of World Hearing Day acted as a reminder that such success is not inevitable, and that a supportive educational environment may not be matched in the wider world. A motion from Alexander Stewart MSP noted that “noise and poor acoustics can often be a significant cause of discomfort, distress and exclusion [for] people with conditions such as hearing loss”, and that more had to be done to tackle the stigma of hearing loss.

Meanwhile, in a time of severe budget cuts, and shortages of specialist and support staff, the wider inclusion agenda has become increasingly fraught. In January, the Scottish Parliament agreed to review the “presumption to mainstream” policy, backing a motion by the Scottish Conservatives that would jar in Dalziel High: they called for “more effective uptake of places in special schools and special units”.

And, even in a place like Dalziel High, there can be setbacks. “I would like to change the attitude that some people have, that deaf people are less intelligent, less capable,” says Josh, an S4 pupil who is doing work experience with a local councillor and is considering becoming a politician.

About two years ago, he stood up for another pupil with a hearing impairment, whose speech was being mocked by a group of pupils in a corridor.

“I just stepped in and said, ‘What are you gaining out of doing that? It’s not his fault.’ And they basically shut up.”

His intervention nipped their behaviour in the bud - there has been no repeat, say staff - but the incident still rankles with Josh. “That’s what annoys me,” he explains. “Some people believe those that have a speech impairment aren’t all there.”

However, Josh stresses that he has never experienced bullying connected to his hearing and that he has “loads of friends that aren’t deaf” - this incident was the exception that proved the rule.

School inspectors came to a similar conclusion in December, noting that Dalziel High’s HID pupils “enjoy the widest possible range of educational experiences across the school community” - including the ski and snowboard club, the school show and foreign trips - and “feel very included”.

“The whole school community demonstrates a strong determination for all learners to be successful,” the inspectors conclude. “This is exemplified very well in the successful integration in classrooms across the school of those in the hearing impairment department.”

But more than verbose inspection reports, it is the pupils who sum up what Dalziel High’s HID is trying to do and how it is perceived. Pupils have recently been considering whether the HID should change its name. In one of the department’s rooms, some suggested alternatives from pupils have been gathered on a wall: “The super deaf department”; “Deaf buddies, deaf learners, deaf besties”; “Little wans’ deaf hub”; “Hearing funhouse”.

And, from one pupil who clearly sees no shame in stating bluntly that this is a department that helps pupils with hearing impairments, there is this: “Political correctness gone mad.”

Henry Hepburn is news editor for Tes Scotland. He tweets @Henry_Hepburn

This article originally appeared in the 29 March 2019 issue under the headline “The school where deaf pupils are loud and proud”