A NEW unit is being created at a York primary school to help to keep deaf children in mainstream education.

The plan is for a new classroom to be built at Hempland School in Heworth next year so that children from across the city who have profound hearing problems can be taught within the city instead of having potentially to be sent away to school for specialist provision at Boston Spa in North Yorkshire.

City of York Council's cabinet member for education, Cllr Janet Looker, said that four or five children will benefit from the project which will see them taught with sign language.

She said: "We have a similar unit for secondary age deaf children, but it became obvious that we needed one for primary children where a child is profoundly deaf and needs more help than a specially trained support assistant.

"These are children who would otherwise have to go out of the area to be educated in sometimes quite expensive provision. They will be taught with sign language and there will be specialist training for the teachers.

"For young children traipsing off to say Boston Spa to go to school can be a real disruption to their lives and with this new provision they won't need to do that any more."

Hempland head teacher, Stuart Outram, said: "We were chosen by the local authority to have the unit and the main benefit will be that these children will be able to be taught locally and there will be support from a team of specialist sign language professionals for the Local Authority.

"The idea will be that the children will receive some specialist teaching in the unit, but be able to spend the majority of their lessons in class with the rest of the children."