Reigate Park Primary Academy has recently introduced British Sign Language (BSL) into their curriculum. This has been a huge success, with some of their Year 6 pupils undertaking their Signature BSL level 101 exam and passing with flying colours!
Reigate Park Primary Academy’s vision is to create a primary BSL curriculum that can be taught to all pupils at their Academy, both hearing and deaf, and enable them to leave with a Signature qualification in British Sign Language.
Reigate Park Primary Academy now aim to implement the new curriculum for Year 3-Year 6 from September 2021 across all classes. Nursery and KS1 will follow shortly after this.
Sally Harrison, Assistant Principal/SENCO at Reigate Park Primary Academy thanked all members of their working party in a statement saying “We’d like to thank all members of our working party for their hard work, advice and commitment over the last year. Members of our BSL Working Party include: Teachers of the Deaf, staff at Reigate Park, parents, staff from Signature, our Reigate BSL tutor, staff from the National Deaf Children’s Society, as well as our wonderful pupils. Everyone on our team has worked extremely hard to write, implement, develop and trial our BSL curriculum in Year 6 and Year 3.”
We hope to share our experiences with other schools and encourage all schools to teach their children lifelong BSL skills.
Lindsay Foster, Executive Director at Signature said “I’d like to firstly congratulate the pupils who have completed their BSL level 101, it’s a great achievement and we look forward to seeing them continue their BSL journey. Secondly, to the staff at Reigate Park Primary Academy who has developed this curriculum and have helped the pupils pass their assessments, it’s inspiring to see a school show the commitment they have to teaching BSL. They have not only given pupils a great life skill, but they have also provided them with the confidence to communicate with a BSL user when they meet them. We hope many more schools will follow Reigate Park Primary Academy’s lead and offer BSL to their pupils”.
You can see a video of the successful candidates signing here: http://www.reigate.theharmonytrust.org/news/year-6-bsl-exam-2021/63463
