Con Powell Memorial Scholarships funded by Ovingdean Hall Foundation and managed by British Association of Teachers of Deaf Children and Young People (BATOD)
About the Scholarships: We offer up to five scholarships per year for teachers to train to become Qualified Teachers of Deaf Children and Young People. The scholarships, which are designed for students whose Local Authority or school is not obliged to support them financially, are managed by the British Association of Teachers of Deaf Children and Young People and are named after their first president Con Powell. Scholars will be supported by staff from our partner organisation, the Ewing Foundation. They are ideal for teachers who wish to qualify as a Teacher of Deaf Children and Young People, but who are not currently working with deaf children.
‘Teaching deaf children requires knowledge about deafness, the psychological implications of hearing loss and how that loss impacts upon listening, literacy and education, as well as communication with the world at large,’ said OHF Trustee Ted Moore. ‘Qualified Teachers of the Deaf are urgently required to help deaf children and young people to overcome these educational and social difficulties.’
The Scholarships are now open for 2024. Find out more.
Please click here to learn more about the Scholarships programme.
Read about our Con Powell Memorial Scholars in these articles from BATOD magazine:
My journey as a Con Powell Scholarship student by Teresa McCabe
Reflections on my first year by Sarah Cadieu
Moving from mainstream with Con Powell Scholarship by Ryan Brewer
During 2021-22, Ovingdean Hall Foundation was proud to sponsor BATOD’s webinar series.
We are supporting two students from the MSc in Audiology and Deaf Education programmes at the University of Manchester by funding their research projects into paediatric and children’s audiology. Dr Kai Uus, who is the teaching lead and programme director at the Manchester Centre for Audiology and Deafness, said the funding will enable students,‘to carry out better quality and more clinically meaningful projects with adequate financial and technical support.’ The funding is also an investment in the next generation of professionals helping deaf children: ‘It will promote the training of the future leaders in audiology and associated services across the country,’ adds Dr Uus.
We are proud to support Auditory Verbal UK (AV UK), a charity which teaches deaf babies and children to listen and speak using Auditory Verbal Therapy (AVT).
AVT helps parents to develop their child’s listening and spoken language skills. It is a play-based approach delivered by Auditory Verbal Therapists who have all undergone postgraduate training. Children with hearing impairment typically acquire language at half the rate of their hearing peers, and AV UK’s programme aims to close the gap by the time they start school. 80% of children who complete AV UK’s programme achieve language on a par with hearing children, and most go to mainstream schools.
We have funded 35 bursaries for speech and language therapists and teachers of the deaf to train as Auditory Verbal therapists, and also covering the part-time salary of a newly qualified therapist.
‘This is fantastic,’ says AV UK’s Chief Executive Anita Grover. ‘We will be in a position to support more children to have the same opportunities in life as hearing children.’