Parents of deaf children at Laycock Primary School

PARENTS at a school for the deaf warned that future threats to their children’s education still hung over them.

Speaking at Islington’s full council meeting last Thursday, Marcus Evans presented a 2,000-name petition calling for the provision of deaf education at Laycock Primary School to be protected despite the school’s financial difficulties.

Draft council figures show that the primary school, in Laycock Street in Highbury, is more than £344,000 in deficit. It is a mainstream school with a deaf unit attached to it, which operates separately from the school and is not undersubscribed.

Mr Evans told the Town Hall that while “disastrous cuts” at the unit were “averted” at the end of last year, “there is still anxiety among the parents that this is a situation that could be repeated without proper protections and assurance being put in place”.

He revealed that just last week he had heard of plans to group year-six pupils in such a way that deaf children could end up spending time in mainstream classes without access to a teacher of the deaf.

“This is a plan which is very close to what was suggested in the original restructure and disregards the deaf children’s needs,” he warned. “Clearly the problem has not gone away and there is still  a very real threat to the deaf provision.”

Councillor Sheila Chapman, who chairs the children’s services scrutiny committee, apologised to the parents over mistakes made by the council previously.

She said: “I’m pleased to hear that officers facilitated engagement with expertise in deaf provision through Frank Barnes School’s deaf provision and the National Deaf Children’s Society. This should have happened at the outset and it didn’t and I’m sorry.”

She said she welcomed a review of special educational needs at the school, currently under way at Laycock by Islington education officers.