Nursery World - Government urged to fund teachers for deaf children to avoid 'staffing crisis'

The National Deaf Children's Society warns that without funding to pay for new specialist teachers 'deaf children's future hangs in the balance'.

The charity's warning follows a survey it carried out with the British Association of Teachers of the Deaf, which revealed specialist teachers are battling stress, spiralling workloads and excessive hours.

Of the 625 specialist teacher for deaf children that responded to the survey, almost half (46 per cent) said they experience stress in their role on a weekly basis, with a quarter affected every day.

More than four in five are now working additional hours due to increasing workloads, with almost two-thirds of those forced to work an extra day every week to catch up.

The NDCS says that despite the Government’s major special educational needs reform in 2014, the entire profession is creaking under growing pressures and increasing needs, which will have grave knock-on effects for the 45,000 deaf children who rely on it.

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