Deaf children win chance to highlight literacy skills

National charity Auditory Verbal UK (AVUK) launched a creative writing competition for graduates and children currently on its auditory verbal therapy programme to highlight their potential in literacy compared with the levels of deaf children generally.

Some 85 per cent of deaf children who have completed AVUK’s specialist parent-coaching programme, designed to teach deaf children to listen and speak, achieved or exceeded the national standard for reading at Key Stage one, compared with 50 per cent of all deaf children, figures from AVUK show.

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Some 77 per cent of children who have completed AVUK’s programme achieved or exceeded the national standard for writing, compared with 44 per cent of all deaf children.

Six children, aged between five and 13, were named as winners of the competition and were due to read out their short stories, poems and diary entries at the charity’s Power of Speech event at Westminster in June.

Among the winners were Callum, aged five, Alana aged seven, nine-year-old Khush and Jasper, 12.

Lauren, 12, was also named as one of the winners alongside Ava, 13, who wrote a poem about suffering with tinnitus. 

Sadly, the event has been postponed for 12 months due to the outbreak of Covid-19.

The competition was judged by AVUK’s auditory verbal therapists alongside Jonathan Douglas, chief executive of the National Literacy Trust, actor, comedian and children’s author Samantha Baines and children’s author and winner of the 2019 Costa Children’s Book Award, Jasbinder Bilan.

Anita Grover, chief executive at Auditory Verbal UK, said: “Many people are surprised to learn that profoundly deaf children can speak as well as their hearing peers.

“The winners of our Power of Speech competition dispel the thinking that deaf children cannot learn to talk or write creatively. Their performances speak for themselves. We are looking forward to seeing them share their work in the House of Commons next year as well as publishing further research on the outcomes being achieved by children like them who have attended Auditory Verbal UK’s family-centred, early intervention programme. These deaf children are bucking a national trend of underachievement in literacy and their attainment levels are on a par with typically hearing children at the end of key stage one.”