ABSTRACT
While children with partial hearing losses can be educated in mainstream schools with special facilities (formerly known as partial hearing units and now known as special educational resource facilities or Serfs), profoundlydeafened children require special education because of their extreme difficulty in acquiring any spoken language. Residential schools exist to provide such education using the total communication approach in which attempts to develop speech are combined with the use of sign language. With the development of cochlear implantation programmes for children there is hope that the numbers requiring this type of education may diminish.
