Briefing Notes for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Deafness
Our organisation consists of:
- Oak Lodge School - a secondary special school for
profoundly deaf children, aged 11 - 19. This includes:
- a residential hostel for 24 pupils who board here for 5 days per week
- the 16 Plus Department for post-16 students attending local colleges
- "Deaf First", a team who provide communication and tutorial
support for deaf students on the roll of local colleges, as well as
Basic Skills courses for deaf adults who have learning difficulties
and/or mental health problems.
- programmes of Sign Language and Deaf Awareness teaching for staff,
parents, companies and members of the public
- Wandsworth Hearing-Impaired Service, including:
- a team of peripatetic teachers who support hearing-impaired children
at home (pre-school), and in mainstream and other special schools
- a library for parents of hearing-impaired children aged 0 - 3, from
across London
- Hearing-Impaired Units in a mainstream primary and a mainstream secondary
school
- a programme of assessment/training and education to meet the needs
of multi-sensory disabled (i.e. deaf-blind) children (with the Visually-Impaired
Service)
- programmes of specialist training for staff here and elsewhere.
- Corner House - the provision of education in a very
specialist inpatient unit for deaf children with severe mental health
problems. It is the only such facility in the UK (and the second in
the world), so receives referrals nationally.
Oak Lodge School - some facts and figures:
- We have 92 pupils from 24 LEA's across Greater London and beyond.
At present, we have just 2 Wandsworth pupils
- All our pupils need to use Sign Language for effective communication
- 80% of our pupils are from ethnic minority groups, with 23 different
languages spoken by parents
- 60% of families do not have English as their first language
- 25% have no English
- Very few pupils have knowledge of their parents' mother tongue
- 90% of parents cannot use Sign Language effectively
- We employ 15 deaf staff.
- In recent years, 100% of our pupils have gone on to Further Education,
and in a small number of cases, on to university.
Peter Merrifield
Headteacher/Head of Service
January 2005
OAK LODGE SCHOOL & WANDSWORTH'S HEARING-IMPAIRED SERVICE
101, Nightingale Lane, London SW12 8NA Tel: 0208 673 3453
Website: www.oaklodge.wandsworth.sch.uk
|
