As of September this year Gilbert Institute, Dellwood Middle School and one of the senior schools in Bermuda ? not yet identified ? will have fully trained teachers for the hearing impaired.

Minister of Education, Terry Lister said last week that teachers would no longer need to move from school to school, but will be site-based in order to provide more intensive instruction in language for these pupils.

Prospect Pre-school has also been identified to offer special services if the need arises.

Mr. Lister could not yet say which high school would accommodate the hearing impaired.

?As you can imagine some refurbishments have to be done to the selected schools in order to ensure that they are acoustically prepared for students. This means that we will install acoustical ceiling tiles as needed and we will invest in FM systems which will make it easier for teachers and students to communicate,? he said.

These moves come in the wake of a visit by consultants from Clarke School for the Deaf in the US, who were in Bermuda last week training teachers at the various schools.

These teachers will also have the opportunity to go to the Clarke campus for additional training in the future.

There are about 23 hearing impaired students in Bermuda and Mr. Lister met with their parents in January.

?The parents who attended the meeting were very candid with me about the educational services that their children were receiving, or not receiving. I appreciated their honesty because that is the only foundation upon which we can build, if we are to improve any aspect of public education,? he said.

He said concerns were raised that the current public education system did not have enough teachers of the hearing impaired.

There were also concerns, he said, that speech and language pathologists were not sufficiently trained to address issues that develop when a hearing impaired child is being taught to speak.

?There were also concerns about the consistency of services offered to students,? he said.

As an alternative, the Department of Education will help parents of students between the ages of five and 10 with severe hearing loss with funding, upon approval, to assist with the cost of attending an approved overseas school for the deaf for a maximum of three academic years.

Clarke School for the Deaf, which is based in Massachusetts in the US, currently offers its services to handful of Bermudian students.

The school offers comprehensive services and programmes to help students of all ages with hearing loss to re-enter mainstream education.

Mr. Lister added that he, and parents, were happy that the model they had in place was one that would help them achieve their goal of preparing children who are all able to compete and contribute locally and globally.