Deaf activists deface HQ of education body after GCSE in British Sign Language is dropped

Martin Shipton

Campaigners from the Deaf community have expressed their disappointment at a decision to suspend indefinitely the GCSE exam in British Sign Language by defacing signage at the headquarters of Qualifications Wales.

Stickers were posted at the building’s entrance in Newport reading “I love BSL” in English and Welsh.

The body announced earlier this year that BSL would no longer be offered at GCSE level. Instead it said that from 2027, learners in Wales will have an opportunity to study BSL as part of the new National Qualifications offer.

Skills for Life

A statement on QW’s website says: “BSL units will be available in our new Skills for Life qualification. These will enable schools across the country to offer qualifications that include BSL with more learners able to develop practical skills for social interaction.

“This exciting new offer will allow a greater number of learners to access this important inclusive life skill and increase their ability and confidence when communicating with those within the Deaf community.

“The BSL units (from entry level to level 2) will offer an engaging way for learners to demonstrate their practical communication skills in BSL. The units will be manageable for schools and lend themselves to peripatetic teaching, making good use of the existing teacher workforce.”

Unimpressed

But campaigners in the Deaf community were unimpressed.

A teacher of BSL, said: “Skills for Life is part of something called Skills Suite. It will replace the current Skills Challenge Certificate. Skills for Life is further broken down into four purposes. BSL would fall under ‘Ambitious, capable learners’.

“The time given to teaching BSL (and each unit) ‘will be around 5 to 25 guided learning hours’.So in essence a BSL qualification under ‘Skills for Life’ is anything between 4% to 20% of a GCSE BSL qualification. The assessment of this qualification cannot be anything beyond greetings and simply giving information about yourself.

“The proposal also states that: ‘This qualification will require learners to work independently on a subject or topic of their choice’. If this includes BSL, my immediate question is how are learners going to be working independently on BSL content with so little BSL skills including five hours of teaching.

“The aim of this is to promote a broad set of cross curricular skills. However, it is so broad that what is going to happen is that teachers will attempt to learn BSL off the internet in the absence of it being a serious subject. It will tick the box of five hours of token teaching off, where deaf people will be given no direction. This downgrades BSL as a language. To quote: ‘These qualifications will allow schools to offer learners a broad and flexible range of bitesize learning experiences’. That’s bitesize, not a specialised subject.

“What about say deaf children who have been exposed to BSL since age three and who are now at progression step 5 on the Curriculum for Wales?. There is no sufficient qualification, ie a GCSE, to demonstrate competency and achievement.

“There is no way people in Wales would accept the Welsh language to be put under ‘Skills for Life’ and assessment to be as little as 4% of a GCSE. It is meaningless and a feel-good tick box exercise on the part of administrators. Yet deaf people are supposed to accept this. How long is ‘suspended indefinitely’? There is no timescale, this could be suspended 10, 20, 30, years from now and quietly dropped, hoping we’ll forget about it.

“Suspended indefinitely isn’t good enough, there has been no engagement with deaf people in Wales and representative deaf organisations. This is very much a language issue – just replace BSL with Welsh and see how it reads.

“QW claims the Skills for Life units will be easier for schools to manage, will be suitable for peripatetic learning, and also make good use of the existing teacher workforce. In other words there is zero commitment to using deaf teachers, just hearing teachers who probably can’t sign or have learnt a bit of Makaton! [a communication tool that uses signs, symbols, and speech to help people with communication difficulties communicate their thoughts and feelings.]

“If you want a Welsh equivalent of this, it is a bit like asking a Welsh learner (under GCSE) to teach Welsh to children at age 14-16. Then teaching 5 to 25 hours of BSL. Imagine that for Welsh.”