Bilingual Deaf School Opens in Indonesia

There are currently 2,390 schools for students with disabilities in Indonesia, but schools for deaf students account for less than 5% of that number. In addition, the number of teachers who are able to teach using sign language is extremely low, at only roughly 2% of all teachers, and there are no schools offering special support so that all subjects can be taught using sign language. As a result, only 54.5% of deaf and hard of hearing children complete elementary school, well short of the 96% graduation rate for children without disabilities. This makes the establishment of  educational environments where deaf children can learn in their native language a pressing issue.

For this project, The Nippon Foundation’s local partner, the Pijar Foundation,^[1] is establishing Indonesia’s first educational model that uses sign language, with the aim of improving educational opportunities for children who had little access to them in the past. Specifically, the project will establish a bilingual deaf education model elementary school that will be Indonesia’s first to use both sign language and written language. It is also establishing a teacher training program so that there will continue to be a sufficient number of teachers who are able to teach in sign language. In the future, the intention is to roll out this model as a national government policy to raise the elementary school graduation rate for deaf and hard of hearing children.