Academic Performance Of Hearing Impaired Learners In An Intergrated Setting In Kapchorwa Town Council Kapchorwa District

ABSTRACT

This study set out to determine the impact of integration on the academic performance of

learners with hearing impairment using three primary schools of Kapcharwa demonstration

school, Kpchorwa primary school and Elgon primary school, all in Kapchorwa Town

Council Schools. The study employed a descriptive comparative research design. Random

sampling was used to select 99 pupils and the student's samples t-test was used to compare

test results of the learners with HI and those who were normal.

The findings showed that over 8% of learners in the sampled schools had hearing problems,

6% had physical disability and majorities (86%) were normal. The study also found out that

the mean scores of learners with hearing impairment and normal pupils significantly

differed in all subjects except in mathematics. This indicated by significant P- values for all

subjects except mathematics i.e. English (P = 000), math's (P = 0.243), social studies (P

=000) and science (P =002). The researcher concluded that the number of hearing impaired

learners, although small (8%), is enough to call for special attention to cater for their

problems, academic performance of learners with hearing impairment significantly differs

from that of normal learners if taught together, with hearing impaired learners having the

worst scores. There fore integration of hearing impaired learners with normal learners,

negatively affects their (HI) academic performance in terms of scores. The researcher

recommended that the government, school administration and teachers should make special

arrangements for hearing impaired learners, because their number is relatively big to be

neglected. The researcher further recommended that. hearing impaired learners should be

taught from their special classes, since integrating them with normal learners negatively affect their performance.