Another 'Survey' aimed at hearing parents of deaf children regarding how they 'choose' to have their child educated. We could save the Uni a lot of pointless effort, as even the NDCS has never gained a significant response to such a survey (Or indeed published any stats if they had). The issue for areas like the NDCS is to support deaf children and their parents, they don't have a definitive policy for communication/language inclusions in deaf educational areas. Choosing such is outside their domain too.
The promoters of this survey are obviously wanting to know why parents are NOT opting for a BSL tuition. We can only put this naivete into prospective by saying they haven't done research on how deaf educational approaches currently function.
Apart from a diminishing deaf school system and fewer deaf to fill them, there is a gross shortage of Teachers to the Deaf. Also as per the BSL GCSE teachers of BSL are NOT qualified to teach the school curriculum, it is a separate qualification. This would pose significant issues to those who insist such teachers should be deaf as well. So it's 'Academic' (Sorry!), to question why parents choice A or B options. In reality choice isn't a real option, A system whereby deaf children can be taught in BSL only doesn't exist, this issue was covered via the BSL GCSE thing, where all BSL areas involved know the tuition isn't there or the training of that tuition exists to make it viable. Least of all to include aspects of deaf 'culture' which hasn't an academic refence system to use, or teachers specifically trained to teach it..
ATR and others, have pointed this out day one, and only this week did the BDA (Who drive all this BSL output), admitted we were right, on their BSL SEE HEAR TV show, i.e. after 10 YEARS or bans, blocks and personal attacks. For 10yrs they talked about it but never did their homework, or discussed practicalities of making it happen. It's important to understand it is 90% emotive and 10% chat and not research, because the research didn't back what they proposed. ATR covered 5 research surveys the last 4 weeks, what you will find is 5% engagement at best, because nobody knows where the hearing parents are, not even the NDCS, or, how a BSL approach could work, it hasn't been tried, and parents are reluctant to have their children used as 'guinea pigs' for the advantage of BSL promotion. Online surveys are suspect as you never really can quantify who is responding. You have to restrict response to your target area, it is easy to get around that online.
Consider, if a proportion of parents DID want their children taught via BSL. You would propose a 'Tiered' system? Whereby some children will be educated in BSL, (You cannot force all parents to comply), and others educated via what works best for them, (which is the current approach). Do you suggest parents get overruled? You cannot offer them choices where options to choose do not exist. No doubt why current BSL campaigners (The majority aren't grass roots, they are charities with few if any grass root membership), are all lobbying politicians and NOT consulting parents, because they know they have no rights or authority to do that in law, so 'back door ' campaigning is way of circumventing parental choice and state mainstreaming too. The BSL GCSE an example, but only aimed at teens and Hearing mostly.
What we see is an area who are desperate to ensure a BSL community continues, commendable in part, but we are talking about parents and their children's futures which are not any domain of deaf groups of any persuasion. We know fewer deaf are using BSL now. The BDA stated it also. We would prefer is surveys (We get 30 a year online doing the same thing), published real data too, as currently those who run surveys do not validate their numbers. Asking 50 people and getting 15 responses e.g. is not sadly, going to produce the results you hope for. I think the public are far more aware how these things operate by now.
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