A pioneering new approach to teaching children who are profoundly deaf or have significant hearing loss is achieving incredible results.
Newlands Primary School in Millbrook, Southampton, has nine children who are now taught in mainstream education with the support of specialist staff and equipment.
A new dedicated building has also been designed to meet their every need, as part of a five year project.
Children who could not speak and struggled to communicate are now "thriving".
Newlands' motto is 'No child is ever left behind' and that is why all the children now sign in assemblies so that those who are hearing impaired feel included and understand everything that is going on.
Karen Mellor, Headteacher, said: "Newlands is very big about belonging and making sure everyone is included, so regardless of barriers we would all work together in order to include the children and I think we've done a really good job in supporting these children just to feel like they're Newlands kids like everybody else."
All the children have access to the latest technology. The teacher wears a microphone which is connected to their hearing aids so they never struggle to hear instructions.
There is a sound monitor in every classroom so if the background noise is too high everyone is alerted by the colour change.
Pupil Amelia Haskel says: "Green means it's very quiet, yellow means it's medium and red means it's very very loud."
