Challenges of Hearing Impaired Students

While Ghana’s educational system has progressed, some persons with disabilities, particularly the hearing impaired, still face barriers to equitable access to formal education and structures, putting them in a dire situation.

The country’s hearing impaired population, numbering 110,625 according to the Ghana National Association for the Deaf (GNAD), does not have access to quality education, due to the lack of resources to ensure their effective and active participation in educational institutions.

A careful examination of Ghana’s educational system has revealed that despite the country’s numerous educational facilities, there are only 16 basic schools for the hearing impaired, which are mainly situated at the regional capitals and only one second-cycle institution to serve this large population.

There is one integrated SHS but because of the lack of resources it is unable to admit a large number of students with hearing impairment, leading to overcrowding in the only SHS. This situation has piqued stakeholders who are calling for immediate and appropriate action.

Current situation

The situation is no different at the Cape Coast School for the Deaf and Blind, where the majority of the necessary logistics for effective teaching and learning are woefully lacking.

In an interview with the Daily Graphic, the Head teacher of the school, Abraham Annang Yemoson, said that although the school had a total of 427 hearing impaired students there were only six interpreters to serve them.

He stated that smooth teaching and learning were hampered because hearing impaired pupils needed audio-visual teaching and learning materials (TLMs) to thrive, but those materials were scarce.

“How to give lessons is often a difficulty because we may need to integrate audio-visual TLMs to assist deaf students and we don’t have enough of them,” he said.

Restating the situation at the school, a Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Health Promotion and Disabilities at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Dr Wisdom Kwadwo Mprah, recalled the system’s shortcomings, such as how it trapped all levels of disabilities in one capsule and then ignored the educational challenges faced by the deaf population.

Government programmes

He emphasised that government programmes and educational policies were not helping hearing impaired people, and that this created a substantial hindrance to them acquiring high-quality, inclusive education.

“Government initiatives do not really benefit deaf people. The main barrier deaf people encounter is communication, but this has not been adequately addressed in educational institutions in Ghana.

“Deaf children are placed in special schools because of their communication needs, but this has not been adequately addressed. We are saying that because of their communication needs, they can’t benefit from mainstream education. Special schools are established to address this need, but have we been able to provide their communication needs in the special schools?

“The situation can be very frustrating for both teachers and students, but unfortunately, and painfully, deaf students are blamed for performing poorly in their exams, which is very unfair. Some people are arguing that communication is not the reason for the poor performance of deaf students. If so, why have they been placed in the special schools?” Dr Mprah asked.

He stressed that “even in the Basic and SHS for the deaf, a large number of teachers cannot communicate with the students in the sign language, so they cannot effectively interact with deaf students; so only a handful of deaf students are able to go beyond the SHS level.

“There is a SHS in the north that admits deaf students but inadequate interpretation services make it difficult for deaf students to go through successful.”

Tertiary institutions

Most higher educational institutions in the country are still struggling to reasonably accommodate hearing impaired students who have transitioned from SHS to the tertiary level.

Facilities in many of these institutions are not hearing impaired-friendly to enable deaf students to participate equally in all classes and other activities due to the fact that most of them are structured to cater for hearing students.

For instance, assistive hearing and communication technology, as well as how they accommodate hearing impaired students in their facilities, are a little over zero per cent at the institutions, making it difficult for the few hearing impaired people who have managed to break through the ceiling to pursue higher education.

Speaking to this, Dr Mprah said “those who are in tertiary institutions are also suffering. Apart from a few institutions, such as the Presbyterian College of Education at Akropong in the Eastern Region, University of Education, Winneba, University of Ghana, Takoradi Technical University, etc. where there are permanent interpreters, other institutions do not have.

“However, since the number of deaf students in some of these institutions fluctuates, some of the institutions sometimes use other students to interpret for deaf students. So, some deaf students attend classes without interpretation service.

“This situation has also limited deaf students’ choice of higher institutions they want to attend (they are forced to choose only institutions that have interpreters. Some of them even pay for the service if they want to attend an institution other than those that have interpretation services.

“Another important issue bothering deaf students is that they have limited courses to pursue because their SHS does not offer courses such as general science, business and agriculture. So they have fewer opportunities in terms of programmes they can offer after SHS.”

He emphasised that there was rarely any intervention focusing on hearing impaired people in educational institutions. He bemoaned that it would be a difficult thing for the educational institutions to break the communication barrier because the use of sign language interpreters and preferable teachers who can sign fluently were not adequately available.

“The few interventions do not adequately address the core issue, which is communication,” he stated.

Way forward

Despite the multiple problems faced by deaf students in educational institutions, Dr Mprah was confident that the country would make progress in cementing its inclusiveness and equity in the education sector, if authorities improved their efforts and provided the required environment for the hearing impaired population.

He argued that the curriculum among other things should be slightly adapted to suit hearing impaired children and the general deaf population.

“The target of the curricular used in the deaf school is for hearing children. They don’t target deaf children. For example, deaf students use four years at the SHS but curriculum covers three years. I think the same thing applies to JHS. If we think they need four years in the JHS and SHS, then the curriculum should be designed to cover this duration,” he recommended.

He reiterated that there should be a clear policy on the use of sign language in deaf schools noting that “currently, there is none, so many teachers do what they like. Many teachers posted to the deaf schools are not fluent in the sign language, they are not obliged to learn it or use it. In fact, there is no programme for teachers posted to the deaf schools to learn sign language.”

Teachers

He said that most of the teachers in such special schools learned the sign language from deaf students, which was a very bad arrangement and efforts should be made to get professionals on board.

“Teacher training institutions should adequately train teachers for deaf schools. This training should cover issues such as use of sign language, attitude towards deaf children and how to teach deaf children,” he said. He added that “educational institutions, especially those that handle deaf students should be adequately resourced,” saying that it was important for deaf students to benefit from inclusive education.

He urged parents to show interest in the education of their deaf children and treat them equally as their hearing children. He also advocated recognising of the Ghanaian Sign Language.

“Finally, and more importantly, the Ghana Sign Language should be given legal recognition as the native language for deaf people in Ghana. That way, service providers will be forced to provide sign language interpretation services. We are not saying every Ghanaian should learn the sign language.

“We are not saying every teacher should learn the sign language, but if one is working with deaf people, then it is only fair that one must necessarily learn to communicate with them. If we do ask blind students to read information on chalkboard this will be unheard of.

Hearing parents will not allow deaf teachers, who do not speak to teach their hearing children without interpreters. Deaf children need the same treatment because they have a right to their language,” he said.

 

Source: Edith Mensah