Scottish Government

1. INTRODUCTION

This study, conducted by Marian Grimes on behalf of the Scottish Sensory Centre ( SSC), in conjunction with the National Deaf Children's Society ( NDCS), forms part of a wider mapping exercise undertaken by the Scottish Government's BSL and Linguistic Access Working Group.

It provides current information about, and explores the complexities of, linguistic access to education for deaf pupils and students in Scotland. It includes the following elements:

• A description of the current linguistic access arrangements for deaf pupils in school and for deaf students in further and higher education.
• A record of the availability of statistics (and any gaps) on:
• the number of deaf children and young people in the different educational sectors;
• - the numbers, location and qualifications of Language Service Professionals working in education (communication support workers, BSL/English interpreters, notetakers, lipspeakers, etc)
  - the levels of BSL held by associated professionals (teachers of the deaf, lecturers).

• A description of current activity which incorporates the aim of improving linguistic access in education.
• A list of recommendations to improve linguistic access across all education sectors.

The resulting report is larger than was originally anticipated. The explanation for this lies in the context of the study as well as the wealth of data collected.

Developments in legislation, policy, research, technology and practice, in all educational sectors, are converging to create unique linguistic access opportunities for deaf pupils and students. In gathering data within this context, it became clear that the wide range, complexity and distinctiveness of each sector's emerging information, warranted as full a representation as possible within the scope of the study. It was also decided, after some debate, to include a section on pre-school education, given the importance of the foundations of language - and of recent developments in this area.

As much statistical information as possible is included, set within an exploration of underlying complexities and of issues which emerged from interviews with key informants. While the report is designed to have coherence as a whole, expressed in the accompanying Executive Summary, it is also organised so that detailed information on individual sectors can largely stand alone. It is hoped that this will increase its accessibility for those with specific interests in individual sectors.

TERMINOLOGY

Throughout the report, the word 'deaf' is used as a generic term to refer to all levels and types of hearing loss and deafness. Occasionally, where there is specific reference to cultural and linguistic minority, a capital 'D' is used.

Specialist visiting services are sometimes known as ' HI services', and are referred to as such in this report.

GLOSSARY OF ABBREVIATIONS