Southampton’s services for children with special educational needs have been criticised in a new report by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

The report, which assessed how well council and NHS services support children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), found weaknesses in several key areas, including quality of specialist support for children with special needs (including deaf children) in mainstream schools is inconsistent across the city; insufficient numbers of specialist Teachers of the Deaf, with senior leaders not taking action to tackle this problem; and children with special educational needs in Southampton performing significantly worse at GCSE than the national average because of these problems.

Speaking to the Daily Echo on behalf of the National Deaf Children’s Society, Nicholas Try said the problem lies with there not being enough teachers for the deaf in the city’s schools.

He said: “Being deaf isn’t a learning difficulty, so deaf children when they get the right support should do as well as their peers when it comes to GCSEs.

“But a lack of support at primary level often results in difficulties at secondary level, which is why deaf children can fall behind later on.”

He added: “Our regional director Eva Jolly and the Special Educational Needs department of Southampton City Council are working closely together to improve support for deaf children across the city.

“They have set up a specialist task group to review the support the council gives to deaf children (everything from numbers of specialist teachers of the deaf, the support given by hearing impairment units in school, to how deaf children’s needs are assessed) and work together to see what is working, what isn’t working, and really to make concrete recommendations for how the 200 deaf children in Southampton can be given the best possible service in the future.

A spokesperson for the city council said: “As an active partner with the National Society for Deaf Children, we are working to improve the quality and consistency of specialist support for children with special needs in Southampton’s mainstream schools.

“Despite our efforts over the past 18 months to do so, we are finding recruitment and retention of specialist staff a challenge and, therefore, we have recently instigated working groups to find alternative support.

“Similarly, we are working in partnership with our academies and our maintained schools to increase GCSE attainment for children with SEND, as detailed in our SEND Strategy 2017-2020.”