Hearing ‘hold-up’

 NOT enough children with hearing impairment in Papua New Guinea are going to school, according to a British volunteer.

And he says the country faces the challenge of getting more of them into school.

Tom Coulter, from the British Volunteer Organisation attached to the Callan Services Institute in Goroka, was speaking during a workshop for 18 teachers at the Kabaleo Demonstration Primary School in Kokopo and staff of the Callan branch in East New Britain. 

Coulter helps to develop education and training courses in PNG schools by working with children who were deaf, partly deaf or had hearing problems.

Coulter, a qualified teacher for deaf children for 30 years, said the biggest challenge for PNG was getting more of these children into schools because a lot of them were missing out on early education.

For example, village children in Goroka with hearing problems are not sent to school because parents think that a deaf child cannot learn.

Coulter says some parents think that the teachers too do not have the skills to help deaf children learn.

“We have to help parents appreciate and understand that in fact there are places in schools in PNG for children who have hearing problems,” he said.

He said teachers were skilled and very effective in working with deaf children.

The objective of the three-day workshop was to promote inclusiveness and train teachers on how to deal with children who have hearing problems.

Kabaleo was chosen as a pilot school because it had 10 students with hearing problems.

Coulter said the first workshop was conducted in Jiwaka and he was using material from up-to-date research statistics in the United Kingdom, Australia, Netherlands and Canada.