Goal fulfilment in school for the deaf and hearing impaired - batod

ResultsTypes of schoolsSchools in Sweden must be equal. This meansthat special schools must offer education thatis as equivalent as possible to that offered atlocal compulsory schools. All deaf and hearingimpaired pupils must be given the opportunityto attend schools that offer equal education. Inpractice, however, there are differences betweenthe types of school, and we present thesedifferences here.They involve primarily the composition ofthe pupil body, the degree of hearing loss andthe goal documents governing their activities.The schools also differ in the areas of tuitionlanguage, timetable and number of years that thecompulsory period covers. All these factors meanthat making fair comparisons is a challenge.Our assessment shows how the four groups ofhearing impaired and deaf pupils have managedin their respective teaching environments. Thedifferences that we can report on here givean illustration of the conditions for teachingand of the challenges that teachers and schoolmanagement face when planning the tuition.Hearing loss and deafnessAdmission to special schools and schools forhearing impaired is based on the degree ofhearing loss, on communication and on theneed for an adapted environment. Unlike inspecial schools, there are no formal governingdocuments – apart from the general ones – thatregulate the possibility of choosing classes for thehearing impaired.As has already been mentioned, we do not inthis assessment have any hearing-related medicaldetails. To acquire a picture of the pupils’degree of hearing loss, parents and schools wereasked a number of questions about these. Weused four criteria to divide hearing loss intodifferent levels (see table 8), basing this on theWHO’s questions on hearing function, but weadapted them to Swedish conditions (WorldHealth Organisation, WHO 2006). Questionsof function in respect of hearing constitute acontroversial area in which there are variations invalidity. An audiogram shows what the ear picksup but not whether the brain has understood.Questions of function focus instead on thecommunicative side of hearing (Noble 1998;Borg & Bergkvist 2006).Diagram 2 presents the parents’ descriptionof the pupils’ hearing loss. What is apparent isthat deaf pupils are generally only found withinspecial schools. Other hearing impairments arefound in all types of schools. Diagram 3 showsthat most pupils whose parents judge them to bedeaf or severely hearing impaired attend specialschools.Deaf and hearing impaired withadditional disabilitiesPupils at special schools do not all achievethe goals at school. The SPM states in itsannual reports that one reason for this is thatthe proportion of pupils with school-relateddifficulties in addition to deafness or hearingimpairment is greater in special school than inother types of school (SPM 2007). However,there is at present no form of register wheremedical diagnoses can be combined with resultsin school. Nor is the support in Swedish schoolsbased on medical diagnoses. Pupils are to begiven assistance in their school environmentirrespective of diagnosis.The SPM performed a survey in 2005 thepurpose of which was to get an idea of themagnitude of the difficulties that pupils at specialschool had in addition to their hearing loss anddeafness. The result of this survey showed that,on the basis of a classification via the WHO’s34 Goal fulfilment in school for the deaf and hearing impaired