The British Stammering Association launched three CD-ROMs in October 2003 - one each for primary and secondary school staff in England and one for young people preparing for the oral work in GCSE English.

Primary schools CD-ROM

Secondary schools CD-ROM

GCSE English Oral Work CD-ROM

Primary and secondary school CDs

These are intended to show good practice by all school staff in support of pupils who stammer.

Pupils who stammer talk to camera about their fear of speaking situations, offering helpful ideas for managing their speaking in class, such as alternative ways to answer the register and how to participate in oral work. The CDs show film of authentic school situations, with pupils who stammer taking part in everyday oral tasks in the classroom, being supported by staff who are following best practice.

There are contributions from parents and speech and language therapists with information about the effects of stammering and strategies to help.

All SENCOs in state schools in England have been sent a free copy of the relevant CD to use and share with colleagues.

CD for GCSE students

The CD for students preparing for the GCSE oral work in English gives advice on preparation to young people who stammer and their therapists. It aims to demonstrate for pupils approaching the GCSE in English the requirements of the oral work, and how best to work to achieve the grade of which they are capable.

This CD has been sent without charge to all Primary Care Trusts in England, so that the speech and language therapists working with these young people can easily access and use the material to help them.

All the CDs are also available for purchase from BSA at £4.99 each - BSA shop.

CD Launch

The three CDs were launched at a reception on October 22nd, International Stammering Awareness Day, to which all the children, teachers, therapists and parents who contributed to the CDs were be invited.

They have all freely given their time to this project so that the needs of all pupils who stammer can be better understood in schools. The BSA is very grateful to them all and acknowledges with thanks the partnership between schools, therapy departments, parents and members of the BSA that made these CDs possible.

The Project

This project, known as the "Speaking and Listening Project", has been undertaken by our Education Officer Cherry Hughes, a former Deputy Head.

As a small charity with limited resources and with only Cherry to work on this ambitious project, the goodwill of school staff, parents and young people has been vital, as we do not have the money to pay for filming in schools, nor reimburse staff and children who take part.

We have been dependent on the support and interest of the stammering community and the interest of teachers who have been trained themselves. That goodwill has been made available to us in abundance, so that even with our tight budget we have managed to film in classrooms and secured excellent material for video clips for the teachers' CD-Roms.

We have also received co-operation from health trusts, and had a number of children who stammer who wanted to take part.

All the young people who have worked to achieve this aim with Cherry were quite certain of the value of what they are doing. Their comments showed that they really want to make life easier for children who stammer by ensuring that all staff in schools have a good knowledge of how to give the best support.

The young boy of 12 who plays an important part in our filming simply believes that "stammering should never hold me back and if everyone in schools understands how best to help me then it won't."

With the schools CD's distributed, we should find all staff in schools being able to quickly and easily access advice about supporting pupils who stammer, without ploughing through complicated texts or adding to the burdens already falling on teachers.

The schools CD's also include information for support staff such as caretakers and dinner ladies as well as classroom assistants, and encourage schools to apply their whole school policy on stammering to them as well.

Our resource will not only make life better for our children, but should empower teachers to use simple strategies, which will not only support pupils who stammer, but will improve the learning environment for the whole class.

Background to the project

The "Speaking and Listening Project" follows from our previous "Helping Stammering Pupils Project", where Cherry trained staff in how best to help children who stammer. Cherry Hughes writes:

The "Helping Stammering Pupils Programme" was coming to a close by September 2000, after training courses had been presented to over three and a half thousand staff in employment or training to work in schools. These consisted of two thousand teachers in employment or training, and about 1550 assistants working or training with a range of children from nursery to secondary age.

During the training it was becoming clear from the evaluation forms that 97% of staff working in education were very unknowing about stammering and its effects upon schoolchildren. As a small charity, it would seem impossible for us to provide direct training for the unlimited numbers of staff who were likely to benefit from it. The need for training was clearly identified, the means of providing it was less clear.

From 1999 the Department for Education was working hard to train teachers in the newly developed Literacy Strategy and produced a series of very specific CD-ROMs which could be used by a teacher on any accessible PC in school or at home.

This method of simply and cheaply disseminating detailed information, with visual images of good practice on video clips from filming in real classrooms, seemed a very possible way forward for us. The acceptability of such material was already proven, and it was relatively cost effective to produce in a training vehicle that was already proving to be popular, and indeed is continuing to be used by the Department for Education and Skills.

A further inducement for making use of the PC was the government's initiative to extend their use in schools and make a computer available to all teachers for professional use both at home and in school.

The case for producing training materials for education staff in this form was made stronger by an ancillary provision that I was now making for young people who stammered, and were preparing for the oral work in GCSE English.

This course had arisen from the large number of enquiries I had received from speech and language therapists who were working with these students and could find no source of information on how best to help them.

I compiled a folder of helpful information and offered to work with a group of teenagers at six health trusts who were approaching the examination and who were prepared to have intensive courses of therapy during the school holidays.

All the courses had good responses from the students, and a number of them contacted me later to tell me how their performance in oral work had improved.

But the overall feedback made it clear that today's young people did not find a folder of information very user-friendly, and preferred to have a CD-ROM which they could use at their leisure, easily refer to, and work on with a therapist, friend or a parent as they chose. As access to PCs was becoming widespread the students wanted easily accessible resources available to them in the same manner as did their teachers.

As a result of the overwhelming evidence that CD-ROMs were more user-friendly the three year Speaking and Listening project was developed and began in April 2001.

Cherry can be contacted by phone on 01606-77374 or by e-mail at ch@stammering.org.

Report updated October, 2003

See also:
News Release: CD-ROMs provide much needed help for pupils who stammer - October 2003
Speaking and Listening Project up-date in out Winter/Spring 2002 edition of Speaking Out.

Our Education Officer