In the UK, according to the National Curriculum, children should start learning a second language from the age of 6 or 7. The most popular languages are Spanish, French, German and Mandarin. However, I myself having been to multiple international schools that follow British Curriculum, and at least two schools in the UK, have never been educated on any form of sign language at all. On average 21 babies are born every minute, and on average one or two per thousand babies are born with a level of hearing loss in one or both ears that affects their understanding and development of spoken language. In the UK, 10-11 million people are deaf or hard of healing. That is one in six of us. There are this many babies born with a hearing deficiency, and this many people in the UK alone that are deaf and its still not seen as an issue that hearing people cannot communicate with them. If students have at least one lesson a week, or every other week for a few years, the material taught in this lesson will stick. Imagine if all students could learn to say simple yet rather crucial questions and phrases such as:

“Can you lip read”

“Hello”

“My name is…”

And how to count to ten. It’s seen as important that students learn how to say these things, and more, in other languages. So why not sign? It’ll make such a difference to those people who struggle with hearing, and bring a further understanding of deafness to UK pupils. After corresponding with a mutual and online friend of mine who is deaf I learnt that: she was in a secondary school that had a small unit for deaf people, but the teachers within this unit only knew some sign language and no teachers in the lessons knew any sign language at all. If National Curriculum recognised sign language as an important language to be taught in school, it would also educate the teachers. We're not asking for it to be a subject that pupils learn three times a week as a second language, just that they learn basic phrases and questions.

Having signatures from people who agree that this should be a change in the education system will take it to the next step... please sign this petition to begin this change.