I was shocked to read today that the Scottish government has decided to stop funding Scotland's only centre for training teachers to work with deaf children and blind children as a result of budget cuts.
The Scottish Sensory Centre has an excellent reputation as a training centre and has also done important research on issues such as assessment of children with multiple disabilities and visual impairment, as well as developing useful resources such as the online BSL glossary. I trained at the SSC as a teacher of deaf pupils and a teacher of pupils with visual impairment and make use of SSC resources regularly in my work.
The Scottish Sensory Centre will be an enormous loss to teachers working with deaf pupils and blind pupils in Scotland, and therefore an enormous loss to the children themsleves. It worries me that children with low incidence disabilities are being viewed as an easy target for money saving exercises, and that the loss of the SSC will be the thin end of the wedge. Troubling times.