Classrooms of Sweyne Park School in Essex have been transformed. Hearing impaired students work with main stream pupils so the school is designated as a resourced school for hearing impaired pupils. It is also a Specialist Science Centre.
I visited the school with a group of teachers who are responsible for hearing impaired students. The school aimed to improve conditions for listening to the teacher. This covered whether the teacher faced students, moved around, was involved with class activities, if pupils worked in groups listening to their peers, or when there was competing talk or background sounds.
With the backing of their Local Authority an evidence-based approach was taken to the refurbishment of classrooms. This was led by David Canning of Hear2Learn, an educational audiological consultancy. The limits of acoustic treatment were noted, published acoustic standards were used, and ratings were completed by students and teachers who were unaware, at the time, whether, or not, their classrooms had been treated. The experimental procedure began with sound profiles of similar classrooms in March 2008. During the Easter holidays these classrooms were acoustically treated for the first time. Detailed data was collected throughout the trial. The classrooms were then retreated acoustically in a manner which was not visibly apparent to the staff and students. This was repeated three times so that so that each classroom conformed to one of the three published standards at some point during the experiment.
My experience of observing maths lessons in visually similar, but acoustically different classrooms was amazing. In the fully treated classroom I could "feel" the quiet on entering. The teacher could be heard easily from the back of the classroom while talking in a conversational manner. The pupils' answers were fully audible. Lighting had been increased (though this had to be reduced when the white boards were used) and the overall ambience was one of calm. In another classroom a rather loud, authoritative voiced teacher was working in a classroom that was only partially treated. The lighting was improved, ceiling lowered and covered with plaster board panels, but no more. The pupils showed signs of restlessness.
We visited the fully treated ICT classroom. The ceiling was lowered, lighting improved, and in addition panels about 4 inches thick had been placed in certain parts of the classroom and air-conditioning was installed. There were 30 computers and not a cable could be seen. The teacher told us he could work all day without voice strain and also hear the voices of individual pupils if they chattered at the wrong time.
I left the school deeply impressed, hoping that similar developments could be adopted by all schools especially now that a school building programme is underway. Would the need for voice training continue? I think so. Many teachers are still unaware of the scope of voice care and skills, and VCN workshops are highly rated by hundreds of teachers who attend each year.
Roz Comins