Support @ HRB

The Hearing Resource Base supports HI, (Hearing Impaired), students throughout their time at Bordesley Green Girls' School & Sixth Form, both inside and outside of lessons.   The aim of the Hearing Resource Base at BGGS is to help students reach their full potential, (and beyond), both as academic learners and individual members of society.  To achieve this aim, the HRB uses up to date modern hearing technology, intervention strategies, support in lessons, social time and space, and in and out of school activities, all geared to the students' specific needs.

Audiological Equipment

Audiological equipment used by students at BGGS includes radio aids, speech processors and cochlear implants.  All of this equipment, in different ways, allows students with hearing impairments to hear their teachers and peers more clearly. 

Hearing aids enable students with hearing loss to hear sound frequencies that they would normally have difficulty, by amplifying the sound.  Unfortunately, this inevitably means that other noises in the classroom, (air conditioning, traffic outside the window, other students' movements or equipment use), will be amplified as well.  This "background noise" can make it difficult for HI students to clearly focus on what exactly is being said by a teacher who may be at some distance from them.  Radio aids, the most commonly used equipment at BGGS, are designed to dramatically reduce this problem.

Radio aids consist of two parts; a transmitter, worn around the neck by the individual speaking, and a "shoe" that fits into the students' hearing aid(s).  Sound is transmitted directly from the speaking person to the students' hearing aid.  This reduces the classroom background noise that the student hears, while amplifying the sounds being transmitted, helping students to more easily to focus on what is being said. A related piece of equipment is the "splitter", which is used to connect the radio aid transmitter to devices such as PCs playing videos or sounds; again, this dramatically improves the clarity of what is audible through the students' hearing aids.

Obviously this equipment, while helpful, must be working effectively to be of any value!  For this reason, every morning the H.R.B. staff check each student’s equipment to ensure that it is working efficiently; any highlighted issues are resolved as quickly as possible.