Hearing impared children in mainstream school - Opionions needed

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Hi everyone, I am currently undertaking a foundation degree in supporting teaching and learning and working in a hearing impared school. As part of my course i am doing a research project with the following question:
'Are there benefits too hearing impaired children attending a resource based main stream school'
What are you Opinions? and feedback given would be great !
Thankyou

won't comment myself, have worked with D/deaf people who have experienced both mainstream and Deaf Schools. Might be worth speaking to some Deaf young adults about their feelings.

DEX could be a place to start, (Deaf Ex Mainstreamers).

DS is severe/ profound and in mainstream with no resource base. For him it is fine, he has no statement but the TOD visits about once every half term and is contactable for any issues, he is on action plus and has about 3 hours a week TA time, this is used to check his equipment and a bit of speech and language support. For us it is preferable, he is in the local school with his siblings and has local friends. He is completely oral and does not see the point of sign language, we have to make an effort to get him to meet deaf peers (which i would see as the main advantage of a resource base) but he seeks out others like him who are educated in mainstream as he does not like what he sees as the 'cliquiness' of kids from deaf schools or bases. Hope this helps, not sure from meeting other families with deaf kids he is necessarily typical but he does have very strong views about this!

hmm, your question leaves me with more questions. What level of deafness are you asking about, attending a ms base compared to deaf school or ms, what about deaf children with additional needs, what sort of base and what age kids?

I can only comment on where we are, the sensory impairment service here is particularly good and supports children what ever their loss in what ever setting which doesn't happen every where. Deaf school here isn't an option, only accessible at senior age and not easy as it's out of borough. Primary age it's ms or ms hi base as the only options. The base, where my dd (5) goes works with the kids integrated the vast majority of the time and taken out for ToD time to the base either 1:1 or small group, some of the kids get 1:1 support while in their class to a greater or lesser extent. All but one of the kids has additional needs, the one child is profoundly deaf and not implanted so needs the benefit of bsl and total communication that the base can provide. Kids with more severe sn as well as being deaf go to the ss, kids that are just deaf are in ms. There are a couple of ndcs groups nearby that are very active and the sis tries to get families together as much as possible so there's chance to mix with other deaf youngsters outside school. It works well like that here, the parents of other kids that I know are quite happy with this set up.

dd falls into the deaf with additional needs lot, base is better than ms for her as she signs but not all bases sign, it'd be better for her if she could be in the base the majority of the time as she's working way below her peers both academically and socially rather than the current set up. She's moving to a ss in sept.

not sure that's any help!

I worked briefly in a HI unit attached to a primary ms. The benefit was the HI children getting regular 1:1 in the unit, being taught by a TOD and a trainee TOD, and having regular SLT in class by a trained SLT. The downside was that in reality the children were not "fully" included in ms as they missed so many classes and therefore never completed ms work - time-tabling never working out - so it was hit & miss, more of a token gesture of "inclusion" to satisfy inspectors and parents. This is my experience of that one school and it may not be the same elsewhere (the school was in special measures having failed inspection...and rightly so, awful school).

My HI dd2 is in ms with no unit.

My severely/borderline profoundly Deaf godson went to a MS primary school with a Deaf unit. This worked well for him, spending a lot of time on the unit when he was in infants but spending more and more time in the MS classes with an SSW as he progressed. He is now in a MS secondary with no unit at his and his parents choice as that was where his hearing friends were going, rather than the secondary with a Deaf unit. He still has his SSW but prefers to lip read and dislikes signing as it makes him self conscious. I suppose that is a disadvantage of being the only Deaf child at the school. Academically he is doing well but he's a bit socially isolated. His peers find him very hard to understand, his voice is very unclear. It depends on what you consider important, surviving in the hearing world or being part of the (quite insular) Deaf community. Difficult choice. It can be lonely in the hearing world if you can't communicate effectively.