PARENTS and students took to the streets in protest at a cuts package which they fear will wreck one of the country’s leading deaf school units.

Families from Laycock Primary School in Highbury, stood outside the building on Tuesday and held up placards calling for a rethink amid concern they will lose the award-winning department’s head.

A consultation among staff began last month on a series of measures to reduce spending at the school, which runs side-by-side with the deaf unit. It ends on January 20.

Television presenter Dr Chris Van Tulleken, who is friends with a parent at the school, joined the demonstration in Laycock Street.

He said: “It’s not just that there are cuts – we know they may have to happen – it’s the total lack of empathy, the refusal to meet the parents of the deaf kids as a group and a total lack of consultation.

“Now there is a consultation because parents have made such an enormous fuss and they still appear to be getting rid of Sue Brownson, and every parent I’ve spoken to has said she is this phenomenal resource and the person who has kept it all together.”

Ms Brownson is head of the unit and was last year crowned Islington Education Awards’ senior leader of the year.

Her deputy’s post and three other HLTAs (higher level teaching assistants) are also on the line in the budget plan.

It is understood she is facing the choice of redeployment to a lower paid role with less responsibility or taking redundancy as part of the savings.

Meanwhile, it has been suggested deaf pupils could be mixed with hearing children for some of the weekly timetable.

A petition launched last Friday calling for Islington to pause on cutting any staff in the deaf unit “until a full impact assessment has been conducted” had reached 1,569 signatures last night (Thursday).

Dr Van Tulleken – who presents Operation Ouch with his twin brother Dr Xand Van Tulleken – said that deaf children are “already marginalised in a hearing society”.

“There are an incredible amount of wealthy parents at state schools in Islington and no one’s cutting their budgets because parents wouldn’t stand for it,” he said.

“If cuts must be made they should be made so they affect the people who can handle them best and that is not deaf children with additional needs.”

There are just 22 deaf schools in the country, and only two other primary schools in London.

It takes years of additional training for fully qualified teachers to become qualified Teachers of the Deaf (ToD) – including the learning of British Sign Language – with parents fearful that should the cuts go through they will be losing invaluable experience.

Parent Eleanor Conroy, whose daughter Shoshie joined the school in September, said: “When we found out Shoshie was deaf we were in shock. Then we heard about Laycock being the UK’s leading deaf provision and just down the road from us.

She added: “It offered us a real lifeline. “We are distressed and disappointed.”

While the deaf unit is fully subscribed at ­Laycock with 64 children, the mainstream school attached has seen its numbers fall in a familiar trend across the borough.

This leaves a budgeting black hole as schools get funding per pupil from government.

In a letter written to parents on Wednesday, Laycock’s headteacher Amy Lazarczyk said: “Unfortunately, when I took on the headship of the school, I inherited a large deficit and needed to work on reducing our spending where possible to correct this.”

She went on to describe how, over the past two years, the mainstream school and the deaf unit had “made a number of changes already” including a restructuring of admin and school site teams.

Ms Lazarczyk added: “Unfortunately, these have not been enough to meet the financial challenges. With this in mind, we continue to complete a process of organisational change at the school, taking into consideration the need for expert adult support across our school, especially in the deaf provision.”

A council spokesperson said: “Integration and deaf awareness will be the sole focus of a working group of education specialists, experts in deaf education provision and service users that will be set up in the new year.

“To be clear, no final decisions have been made by the school, and the quality of education for the whole school community, including deaf and hearing-impaired pupils,