• For several years, the Pôle d'enseignement des jeunes deaf de Ramonville has allowed students to follow bilingual French - French sign language (LSF) education throughout their schooling.

  • Recognized, this system attracts many families from the region and from all over France, to the point that the municipality and the rectorate have had to limit the number of students in order to maintain a good reception and the objective of inclusion within the school.

  • This year, due to lack of places, six students will be educated in another school in Toulouse, with a teacher with a degree in LSF.

“My daughter asks me where she will be at the start of the school year, I don't know what to answer.

We have already moved and changed regions, this situation is anxiety-provoking for her.

Clémence Couture is angry and distraught on the eve of this new school year.

Her daughter Elisa is deaf and, when she left northern France in July to settle in Ramonville, south-east of Toulouse, she thought her child would join a CM2 class at the Jean-Jaurès school in the town. , within its teaching center for young deaf people.

But faced with the influx of requests, he was told that Elisa would be educated on September 1 in a school in the Rangueil district of Toulouse.

The system set up in Ramonville several years ago, which offers sign language lessons in nursery and primary school, has for many years attracted pupils from all over the region but also from other academies.

This is what prompted this mother last February to bring her daughter to this town in the Toulouse suburbs to take a test.

“I was then told that Elisa could be accepted.

To put all the chances of success on his side, I made the decision to settle here, I resigned and found a job.

In the meantime, I was told that she had been put on a waiting list because the quota of children welcomed had been exceeded.

She will have to go to Toulouse, while her hearing little sister will be educated in Ramonville, ”laments this mother who has received support from the Association of Parents of Deaf Children of Haute-Garonne (APES).

Six students concerned and registered in Toulouse

Because Clémence Couture is not the only one in this situation.

In total, six children will have to integrate the school of Rangueil.

“Until now, there was no limit for deaf children in Ramonville.

These are the only bilingual classes in the academy and there is a real ecosystem there.

There is a need to form a classy group, the children need to be together, in a suitable establishment.

In Rangueil, are there light signals when the alarm goes off?

Are the facilitators signed?

We would not be against a system shared between two municipalities, but it is being prepared, ”insists Etienne Barthélemy, the secretary of the Apes, who has been mobilizing for several weeks to intervene with the town hall and the rectorate.

A complicated situation which is not new for the educational authorities.

“In Ramonville, there is a capacity to accommodate students in good conditions, which has been the case for a long time.

This year, there is an inflation of requests for the start of the school year.

As the reception capacity is limited, for security reasons, for reasons of efficiency, it is not possible to enroll them in Ramonville.

It is up to us, with the town hall and other partners, to work on improving the reception of these students in this new school.

The objective is to provide the same reception conditions, ”assures Mostafa Fourar, the rector of the Toulouse academy.

Its teams indicate that in Rangueil it will be a qualified sign language teacher who will provide the lessons, helped by two accompanying persons with disabilities (AESH) who sign.

Limit to maintain educational inclusion

If the academy of Toulouse, and the schools of Ramonville in particular, has become a reference, it is because elsewhere the structures are lacking.

“We have been advocating for the opening of a teaching center for young deaf people in another town for years,” recalls the mayor of Ramonville, Christophe Lubac.

Initially, the agreement signed by his municipality with the National Education set a reception gauge for deaf children at 36 students.

“We agreed to increase it and limit it to 56 to have a good educational and reception level, today we are at 62. The principle is that of inclusion, but, as and when time, with the increase in numbers, the question of educational inclusion with other children arises.

If a third of the staff of a school has a disability, there is a grouping that is done and there is no longer inclusion, "insists the city councilor who wants to keep his Pole, but would like that d others can equip themselves with a similar device, with similar means.

Especially since 66% of the students of the PEJS of Ramonville do not live in the town.

“It's not normal for a Lille family to move to educate their children.

Some now put forward the argument of the school map to justify the registration of these children.

If I reverse it, I will only educate 20 deaf children in Ramonville.

We never looked at it like that.

Tomorrow, if a PEJS is born in Toulouse, parents will be happy to send their children to school in their municipality.

Let's keep what works and try to develop elsewhere”, Christophe Lubac further pleads.

Our file on the start of the school year

​

Parents still hope, but without illusions, that their children can be taken to Ramonville this year.

In the meantime, they will mobilize this Thursday morning in front of the Jean-Jaurès school alongside the deaf community "so that these fragile devices continue and develop in National Education", concludes Etienne Barthélemy.

Economy

Handicap: Training in sign language, one gesture towards the other

Toulouse

Toulouse: Deaf actors will be able to obtain a theater diploma in sign language

  • Company

  • Toulouse

  • Disability

  • Deafness

  • Education

  • Primary school

  • Language

  • Inclusion

  • Occitania