Hearing impaired students taking part in class

Until 2000, the hearing impaired were only able to study as far as the 7th grade in the few schools that existed for them in Vietnam. Previously, none of the graduates of these schools went on to senior high school, much less university. Thus, no opportunities were available in the country for study beyond the junior high school level.

This changed dramatically in 2000. With a grant from the Nippon Foundation, a full junior and high school education program was established in schools for the hearing impaired, enabling students to take the entrance exams to university. The trailblazers for this program were Dr James Woodward and his Vietnamese colleagues, Nguyen Thi Hoa, and Nguyen Tran Thuy Tien.

Teachers in this new program were all trained intensively to be able to teach exclusively in sign language. While in the past, schools for the hearing impaired had cut curriculums and taught at a very slow pace, under the new program's guidelines, students received the same curriculum, at the same speed as the non-hearing impaired.
A similar program was also established, providing hearing impaired adults with a regular junior and senior high school curriculum, in order to prepare them for university if they choose to apply. All adult education classes were also conducted totally in sign language.

At the university level, one course was established Ho Chi Minh City to research and analyze the sign language of that region and prepare a dictionary and grammar guide for the hearing impaired there. Another was created to train the hearing impaired themselves to become sign language teachers. A secondary purpose of this course was the production of educational texts that could be taught in signage.

Complimenting these programs of study was yet another university to prepare non-hearing impaired translators of sign language. These translators will work together with the hearing impaired to advance and explain their programs more widely in the region.
As a result of this funding and support, last year 100% of the students in Vietnam who were enrolled in the junior and senior high school hearing impaired programs graduated from their schools, compared to a nationwide average of only 76% of non-hearing impaired students who graduated from regular junior/senior high school programs.

Among the hearing impaired graduates, one went on to study at a regular university last fall - this first time in Vietnam's history that this has happened.