Children living with sight loss in the United Kingdom are in danger of having their futures stolen away from them if harmful cuts to local authority specialist education budgets are allowed to continue.
The Royal National Institute of Blind People has revealed startling statistics gained through Freedom of Information Requests which show that 42% of local government vision impairment education teams have seen their budget cut or frozen in the last 12 months.
Most worryingly, two-thirds (61%) have reported a decrease or freeze in the number of specialist VI teachers despite a 10% increase in children recorded as being visually impaired in local authorities across England.
According to RNIB data, there are some 35,000 young people aged 0-25 across the country, with around 70% in mainstream education, highlighting the vital importance of having a Qualified Teacher of children with Vision Impairment attached or embedded within these institutions.
Approximately half of visually impaired children present with an additional special educational need or disability but only 2% attend dedicated schools for the blind where the most highly tailored education pathway is available.
In regards to special education funding across the board, RNIB’s findings are further supported through research undertaken by the Disabled Children’s Partnership which found that seven out of 10 parents of children with disabilities felt that their children’s health had deteriorated due to a lack of support – with only one in three expressing the view that they enjoyed an appropriate level of support from their education setting.
Commenting on the figures to emerge from RNIB’s Freedom of Information request, the charity’s Head of Education Caireen Sutherland said: “These figures are just the latest in a trend of budgets being cut or frozen. From RNIB’s last five years of Freedom of Information reports, we’ve seen a consistent trend in budgets for specialist VI education being cut or frozen, with more than a third of local authorities VI education teams having their budget cut at least once.”
A lifetime of consequences
For the young people at the coalface – the stakes simply could not be higher.
Sight loss, particularly in more severe cases, is what is referred to as a low-incidence, high-need disability, with much of the specialized educational input required focusing on elements like skills of independent living and mobility in addition to academic attainment.
This is where the role of a Qualified Teacher of Children with Vision Impairment, or QTVI is so important as their influence is multidisciplinary. The input of QTVIs starts right from early years education using play to build a truly unique sense of the world through to developing ICT skills through specialist assistive technology.
QTVIs are also responsible for educating the educators in schools by helping teachers to prepare accessible learning materials whilst also liaising with therapists and other health professionals.
Sadly, as is often the case in special educational needs – there are simply insufficient QTVIs to go around and this is a contributory factor to there being an academic attainment gap between fully sighted and visually impaired children of around 33% up to the age of 16.
When it comes to employment, 20% of visually impaired 16–25-year-olds are out of work compared to just 12% of their sighted peers.
This may go some way to explaining why, according to RNIB research, 14-year-olds living with sight loss are twice as likely to feel unhappy, downhearted or tearful as sighted children of the same age – 46% versus 20%.
Alarmingly, by the age of 17, they are six times as likely to say they feel hopeless all or most of the time and five times as likely than their fully sighted peers to say that they feel depressed.
The charity is calling for the Department of Education to address these national funding disparities as a matter of urgency. RNIB would also like to see the widespread adoption of its Curriculum Framework which identifies the essential elements of skill development and best practice to offer children with sight loss their best shot at an equitable education.