What about University?

As an extra for my production blog, I wanted to gain an insight into the support deaf students get after they leave school. I was really interested to find out about the support deaf students get at university.

So, I was able to interview a partially deaf student, Oliver Downey, who is in his second year at university. Oliver was born deaf, although his parents did not realise he was deaf until the age of two when he kept putting his hands over his ears to try to tell them he could not hear. I found this fascinating how such a young child can communicate this to his parents. Oliver told me all about his school support, which is very similar to Ruby's. He had a learning support assistant in the classroom with him, as well as a scribe in some of his lessons. This was all funded by the government. In school, Oliver also had his teachers wear a mini-mic which is clipped on to their tie so that Oliver could hear what they were saying more clearly.

Oliver doesn't have a LSA at university

At university, Oliver was able to apply for extra funding as part of his maintenance loan for his disability. This also enabled him to get extra equipment such as a laptop and specialist headphones to help him with his studies. However, Oliver mentioned that he does not have the support for a learning support teacher while at university and is never pushed to use his equipment to help him and therefore does not feel the need to use the equipment. This made him prefer his education when he was in primary and secondary school, as he always had someone there to spur him on to use his equipment.

Oliver wears hearing aids, unlike Ruby who has a cochlear implant. This means that Oliver can still hear some sounds as the hearing aids just amplifies the sound. To help him further in understanding what people are saying to him, he has learnt to lip read. He said to me that a skill he has is to lip read what someone is saying from the other end of the room!

Listen to the full interview with Oliver: