BBC Scotland News
BBCA deaf teenager has won a legal fight against Fife Council to have a British Sign Language interpreter in her class for school lessons.
Niamdh Braid, 16, from Glenrothes, launched an action against her local authority last year after missing out on essential learning.
She has been deaf since birth and wears hearing aids, but the teenager struggles to hear in noisy environments. Her preferred language is British Sign Language (BSL).
Niamdh often cannot understand what is taking place during class time and her learning has been affected as a result.
Her efforts to try to keep on top of her lessons without an interpreter left her “exhausted”.
She told BBC Scotland News: “At the end of the school day I’m so tired. I have to leave class sometimes and take a break because it is just so much.
“I come home and I have to go to my bed at half past seven or eight o’clock at night. That’s not normal for a 16-year-old.”
Auchmuty High School, where Niamdh is an S5 pupil, does have specialised deaf provision through teachers of the deaf.
This is a qualified role used in schools across Scotland.
But in some cases the post only requires a BSL level 3 qualification. A BSL interpreter must have at least Level 6 BSL qualification.
Niamdh and her parents had previously asked the school for a BSL interpreter but their request was turned down.
A complaint to Fife Council was also rejected.
Following this, and with financial support from charity National Deaf Children’s Society, Niamdh raised her own legal action against the local authority.
Niamdh said: “Deaf children are eight times more likely to leave school with no qualification and that shouldn’t be the case because deafness is not a learning disability. We are able to learn, we are able to achieve anything.”
Early last year in a tribunal, it was ruled that Niamdh was being placed at a “substantial disadvantage” and was “at risk of feeling isolated, withdrawn, unsupported and not listened to” without advanced BSL interpretation.
The ruling also stated that Fife Council’s BSL provision was only up to Level 2 qualification
During the case, Fife Council had argued that there was no spare capacity to assign Niamdh regular input and BSL support without the need to recruit additional staff. The tribunal rejected the complaint.
The tribunal’s ruling said the failure to provide advanced BSL support meant the claimant was “missing things in class and does not know what she is missing”.
Fife Council initially appealed the decision but in December that appeal was rejected.
The local authority has now said it will not challenge the ruling any further.
Fife Council must now provide BSL support at a qualified interpreter level in all of Niamdh’s National Qualifications classes. A recruitment process is under way.
In a statement, Fife Council’s head of education services, Angela Logue, said: “We have been working very closely with Niamdh and her family to meet her needs as identified by the tribunal.”
Niamdh’s father Steve Braid told BBC Scotland News: “It’s disgusting that we’ve had to fight as hard as we have, and as hard as Niamdh’s had to fight. We’ve been quite lucky as, in the end, we’ve got to where we have but there’s a lot of people out there who won’t fight as hard or don’t realise what they are entitled to.
“I’m immensely proud of what’s she’s done. She’s so passionate about wanting to take this all further and prove that just because she’s deaf doesn’t mean to can’t do something. She’s very stubborn.”
The legal action was funded by the National Deaf Children’s Society.
Mark Ballard, its head of policy in Scotland, told BBC Scotland News: “Deafness, by its very nature, means that children can just disappear into the back of the classroom.
“That’s why we hope that every local authority in Scotland will look at this and put in place the support that deaf children need, rather than those children and their parents having to go all the way to a tribunal to get what should be theirs as a right.”
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