Cape Town - Premier Helen Zille says that what has been achieved in the past three years at the first school in the country to introduce a sign language curriculum is “quite marvellous”.
Zille and Education MEC Donald Grant visited the De la Bat School for the Deaf in Worcester on Tuesday to meet teachers and pupils and discuss how things have been going since the the curriculum was introduced.
The school introduced a curriculum for SA Sign Language following recommendations made by a task team that looked at the state of education at special-needs schools accommodating deaf/hard-of-hearing children in the Western Cape.
The task team made specific recommendations for improving the quality of teaching and learning in the schools, and one of the recommendations was to introduce SA Sign Language as a formal language of teaching and learning in the classroom.
Zille said: “SA Sign Language has been standardised now for all deaf people in the Western Cape and South Africa.”
Minna Steyn, project manager of the SA Sign Language Project, said that they first introduced the curriculum to the youngest children in De la Bat’s foundation phase, and the project is now being rolled out at four other schools for the deaf in the province – Noluthando, Dominican Wittebome, Mary Kihn and Nuwe Hoop.
Steyn said that because sign language was like a home language for deaf pupils, having the curriculum in the language made it easier for pupils to learn other subjects.
In a school subject such as technology, for example, where signs did not exist for some of the words needed, teachers and pupils worked together to come up with new signs.
She said the pupils were doing well and it had been wonderful to see how the school had taken up the project.
Steyn took Zille and Grant through the project and progress at the other four schools. She said that by introducing the project in the province, De la Bat was three years ahead of other schools in the country.
The national Department of Education plans to introduce the sign language curriculum only next year.
“In August 2010 we had only two qualified teachers to teach the curriculum. By September 2012 last year we had 13 teachers and three speech therapists who are qualified.”
This was a first for the country.
Zille and Grant were also introduced to staff while some of the pupils got the chance to read sentences presented to them in sign language.
Steyn said the project initially targeted the foundation phase but the curriculum was fully implemented in Grade R to Grade 6 and partially implemented in grades 7 to 12. - Cape Argus