Sign of the times: Filipino Deaf learners and their plight for inclusive education
As a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), the Philippines has committed to provide quality education for learners with disabilities. However, Deaf students in public schools continue to face challenges in their education.
By Alex Culla, Donavie Gud, Anya Limbaga, Andrea Pauline Naig
MANILA, PHILIPPINES — Steph Reginaldo, 12, danced gracefully inside their classroom decked with Christmas decorations. She and her classmates were practicing a dance presentation for the year-end party of Bagong Ilog Elementary School in Pasig City.
As the song “Last Christmas” was played in the room of pupils following a choreographed dance from a YouTube video, Steph was copying the movements from the television screen inside the classroom.
She is a sixth-grade student enrolled in the Special Needs Education (SNEd) program of Bagong Ilog Elementary School. She is hard of hearing. Her family confirmed her deafness when she was around five to six years old during a medical check-up. She is profoundly deaf in her left ear, but can hear a little in her right ear.
Steph is one of tens of thousands of Filipino Deaf learners in the country who grapple with limited access to education and resources. As the government pushes for an inclusive education, teachers and advocates continue to work in ensuring that students like Steph are not left behind.
Going the distance
Deaf students, like Steph, had to transfer schools in pursuit of better education, even if it is farther from their homes. For Steph, her parents believe that their daughter would be more comfortable with her peers and receive an education appropriate to their children’s needs.
Steph is currently attending mainstream classes as part of the Department of Education’s (DepEd) partial integration of the learners with disabilities (LWD) in a regular classroom. LWDs spend half of their school hours in mainstream class, while the other half’s in self-contained classrooms.
When the clock struck at 10, Steph bid goodbye to her classmates as she went down from her mainstream classroom to go to a self-contained classroom, where all of her classmates are deaf.
Necko Reginaldo, Steph’s father, noticed notable changes when Steph was enrolled in a regular class compared to being partially integrated.
Steph began attending classes at the Ilugin Elementary School where she studied alongside hearing classmates until third grade. By fourth grade, around the time she lost her hearing, her teacher referred her to Bagong Ilog Elementary School, a school that would better cater to her needs.
“She could keep up before. When she is asked to write, she can write. When she reached fourth grade, Steph was already having difficulties. She can’t say what she wants to say. Her teacher took pity because she cannot understand when her classmates are talking to each other. She just watches them,” Reginaldo said in Filipino.
After a few weeks of being enrolled in Bagong Ilog Elementary School, Steph’s father noticed that her daughter was “happy” whenever he dropped her off at school. He realized that his daughter was able to express herself more in her new school.
It is the same reason Victoria Castro transferred her son, Joshua, to Bagong Ilog. Joshua is profoundly deaf and is having difficulties with walking.
Joshua was initially enrolled in De Castro Elementary School from Kindergarten. However, a policy requires fourth grade SNEd pupils like Joshua to be included in mainstream classrooms.
Mrs. Castro wanted Joshua to keep studying in a self-contained classroom since she believes this will cater to her son’s needs.
A teacher from De Castro Elementary School recommended Bagong Ilog Elementary School to Mrs. Castro, where there is a partial integration of SNEd students. She immediately arranged Joshua’s transfer to Bagong Ilog. She saw Bagong Ilog as suitable for Joshua because of the self-contained classroom despite the distance of the school from their home.
Like Steph’s father, she saw Joshua in a better and “happy” state in Bagong Ilog.
Inclusive education through equality?
According to DepEd, 324,968 learners are enrolled in the SNEd program for the school year 2023-2024, of whom 10,264 are deaf. These students are accommodated across more than 22,000 SNEd schools nationwide.
Unlike private schools, public schools offering the SNEd program do not charge any tuition fees, making them an accessible option for LWDs.
DepEd said that it is committed to the principle of inclusive education, ensuring that all learners, regardless of their disabilities, are educated together in the same classroom.
“The idea is that there should be no barriers or self-contained classes, because based on the laws that have been implemented for so many years, everyone should be in the same room. They should be given access to education,” Bravanti Francia, a senior education program specialist for SNEd at DepEd, said in a mix of English and Filipino.
This setup, however, is not preferred by Joshua’s mother, Victoria.
“For me, I don’t dream of including him in a regular class because they [Deaf students] really struggle to understand… He really doesn’t understand and it’s difficult for him,” Victoria said in Filipino.
Deaf learners often do not have positive experiences when mixed with hearing students. Jedrick Ilas, a 12th grade student, is one of them.
Jedrick began his education in a SNEd school in Rosario, Cavite. After graduating in elementary school, he transferred to the Philippine School for the Deaf (PSD) in Pasay City.
PSD, formerly known as the School for the Deaf and Blind, was organized in 1907 by hearing teacher and child of deaf adults (CODA) Delia Delight Rice. It remains to be a pioneering educational institution for the Deaf in the country.
When Jedrick learned about PSD, he enrolled as a new student in seventh grade, and is now in his last year of high school. He shared that there are differences compared to his previous school in Rosario, Cavite.
“I feel like what I learned there was not enough, unlike the extracurricular activities here; there are many,” Jedrick said, as interpreted by Tess Buenaventura.
Lack of quality education
As a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), the Philippines has a responsibility to provide quality education to Deaf learners. However, these students continue to face challenges at school.
A policy brief published by Oscar M. Lopez (OML) Center found that there are still gaps in the education of Filipino students who are deaf.
These include the shortage of learning materials, and teachers proficient in sign language for Deaf learners, which Jedrick witnessed first-hand in his previous school in Cavite.
“The problem with our academics there is that it’s really lacking. The classrooms are insufficient, there are no PowerPoint presentations. Everything is written,” Jedrick said as interpreted by Tess Buenaventura.
Jedrick admitted that he learns better in PSD, but he said that some new teachers have yet to master proficiency in sign language.
“For example, the new teacher faces the class but signs so slowly. We can’t understand it,” he shared through an interpreter.
Burdened teachers
Teachers of Deaf students are at the forefront of imparting knowledge to their students, and ensuring effective methods are used.
Noeneil Villanueva, a high school research teacher at PSD, said that the learning modules distributed by DepEd are overwhelming in quantity, resulting in compromising quality.
“Because there’s an overwhelming number of modules, one would question if all of these are essential. We revise them to make them easier for the children to understand,” Villanueva said.
He emphasized that the time spent modifying these modules could be better utilized in creating their own-crafted instructional materials, explaining that only after the revisions can these be fit for use.
Beyond the strain from dealing with the learning materials, another issue is the mode of communication between teachers and deaf students. The OML Center discovered that there is a lack of signing teachers or Filipino Sign Language (FSL) interpreters who assist in classrooms.
In the first National FSL Summit in 2021, Dr. Therese Bustos of the University of the Philippines College of Education said that the best FSL school requires that the “teacher has to be deaf.”
DepEd has no data on the number of deaf teachers in the country and how many teachers are proficient in sign language. In PSD, only two teachers are deaf. Most of the teachers of the Filipino Deaf students are capable of hearing, who eventually learned FSL as their second language.
In Bagong Ilog Elementary School, Tesa Olayres is the only educator teaching Deaf students in their self-contained classroom. She learned FSL by enrolling in interpreting classes. In the current school year, Olayres is handling all 22 enrollees who are deaf from kindergarten to sixth grade.
“For the self-contained classes, I’m on my own. But for grades 4, 5, and 6, there are approximately 30 teachers and they know FSL because they were trained before we placed the deaf students in their classes,” Olayres shared.
Olayres and most of the hearing teachers are utilizing the Total Communication philosophy, which is an integration of speech and signing. A teacher must speak to communicate with students who are hard of hearing, and also sign for those who are profoundly deaf.
Deaf-approriate education model
The OML Center said that there is no deaf-appropriate model of education yet in the Philippines. Aside from the absence of standards in FSL interpretation, there are still no publicly available reference materials for deaf learners today.
Dr. Leo Sulse, research coordinator of the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde School of Deaf Education and Applied Studies, suggested the adoption of the Bilingual-Bicultural (BiBi) educational model.
“This model promotes the use of Filipino Sign Language (FSL) and written Filipino [or] English as languages of instruction. It is based on the idea that Deaf students should be bilingual: fluent in both their native sign language (FSL) and a written language, like Filipino or English,” Sulse explained in an email correspondence.
He also admitted that schools and teachers are “not yet equipped” with the resources and materials necessary in adopting the BiBi model.
FSL was only declared as the national sign language of the Filipino Deaf in 2018 through Republic Act No. 11106. Under this law, FSL should be used as the medium of instruction in education settings.
But six years after its passage, educators are still struggling to follow due to the lack of resources and because the standardization of the language has yet to be done.
Filipino Deaf learners in basic education strive to journey through barriers—gaps in government policies and the scarcity of teachers fluent in FSL.
Quality education should be accessible to all students. Yet, for learners with disabilities, it remains an unfulfilled promise. Filipino Deaf learners like Steph, Jedrick, and Joshua continuously long for a genuinely inclusive education—one that speaks their language and truly listens to their needs. (RVO)
The authors are journalism students from the University of the Philippines Diliman. An earlier version of this story was submitted for Journalism 117 (Online Journalism) class under lecturer Mara Cepeda.
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