About 95% of deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) pupils in this country are mainstreamed at their local school.
Co-enrolment — currently offered only overseas — would involve having several DHH pupils, rather than often just one, in a primary school class.
"I think it would be more cool if we had everyone signing [using sign language].
"It would be good for everyone," Oliver (8) said yesterday.
Born deaf, Oliver has a cochlear implant, which provides a modified sense of sound.
He is a year 4 pupil at Mornington School, and last year won a national award from Deaf Children New Zealand for his greatly improved reading ability.
The co-enrolment trial — at a place and time yet to be considered — is recommended in the report, by Dunedin educator Denise Powell.
Mrs Harper, who was born deaf, said co-enrolment should be "the goal, the aim, the gold standard" for deaf education.
"It would be huge ... For me the best thing is the socialisation: the children having other children around them that are like them."
Mrs Harper was undertaking Canterbury University study online, and hoped to become a teacher of the deaf.
Mornington School provided Oliver with "great" support, as did a deaf day school, she said.
Dr Powell’s report to the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust followed a year spent in the US, Canada and Australia to study co-enrolment.
Pupils could become socially and linguistically isolated if they were the only DHH person in the class, she said.
However, in co-enrolment several DHH pupils and two teachers — one of them a specialist teacher of the deaf — were in the classroom.
The academic and socio-emotional development of many deaf children consistently lagged behind their hearing peers and positive change was needed, Dr Powell has said.
