I was one of those late-70s deaf children and yup, mainstream primary with no support and no sign language (in school; I did learn some outside but no one at school could use it with me!). I became progressively more deaf through my first two years at school so teachers didn't realise that I was lipreading until the second year (not long before I turned 7) and when they did they did make an effort to always face me, speak clearly, etc - but one side-effect of this was that I was deliberately left out of big group activities where they knew they couldn't give me individual instruction. (This suited me as I could sit in the corner with a book, my natural inclination anyway.)
Once I became totally deaf they more or less gave up teaching me as part of the class and everything important was written down. Everyone was waiting on the planned operation (which did give me back ~60% hearing, just after my 8th birthday) so there was no effort made for anyone to work with me or learn BSL or anything else. Kind of a cop-out, in retrospect, but no one thought it was actually holding me back and there doesn't seem to be much evidence that it did. Since I'd learned to talk before any hearing loss, had taught myself to lipread, had a good level of literacy, and was probably going to be able to hear again "sometime soon" the idea that there might still be problems was ignored. [I spent a lot of time aged 8-11 being told off for pronouncing things incorrectly - all the words I'd learned only by reading them! - and for speaking far too loudly.]
My brother's experience, for a year in the early 1980s, was much more positive, although again he wasn't taught BSL as his hearing loss was about to be fixed and there were no resources for a signing TA or teacher.
For the OP, since that drifted off a bit - I have never encountered Cued Speech, not when I was deaf and not since. If it was in use by the late 80s it was probably not widespread. You could explain it away as a progressive technique used by someone who'd learned it in the USA, though - the 80s were all about "progressive educational techniques" (not all of them good or worthwhile!). It might get the odd eyeroll but if it was proved to work, the scepticism would soon go.
Cued speech is not a language - it's a visual representation of other languages. It was designed primarily for education and then began being used by hearing parents with a deaf child who were not being encouraged to learn ASL. Less than .5% of children in the USA are being taught in a Cued environment. ASL and SEE are used with 10% of the student population. It's not surprising you haven't heard of it.
Er... I never said it was. ASL is irrelevant in this question, which is about mainstream UK schooling (which would never use it, obviously). A bit less of the patronising tone, eh?
Evidence shown in another comment shows that Cued Speech was being used in specialist schools in the UK in the 1970s and 80s, but it didn't make it into mainstream schooling in those decades as far as we can tell. Which is what the OP wanted to know.
Once I became totally deaf they more or less gave up teaching me as part of the class and everything important was written down. Everyone was waiting on the planned operation (which did give me back ~60% hearing, just after my 8th birthday) so there was no effort made for anyone to work with me or learn BSL or anything else. Kind of a cop-out, in retrospect, but no one thought it was actually holding me back and there doesn't seem to be much evidence that it did. Since I'd learned to talk before any hearing loss, had taught myself to lipread, had a good level of literacy, and was probably going to be able to hear again "sometime soon" the idea that there might still be problems was ignored. [I spent a lot of time aged 8-11 being told off for pronouncing things incorrectly - all the words I'd learned only by reading them! - and for speaking far too loudly.]
My brother's experience, for a year in the early 1980s, was much more positive, although again he wasn't taught BSL as his hearing loss was about to be fixed and there were no resources for a signing TA or teacher.
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Evidence shown in another comment shows that Cued Speech was being used in specialist schools in the UK in the 1970s and 80s, but it didn't make it into mainstream schooling in those decades as far as we can tell. Which is what the OP wanted to know.
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I know all about its use. I am really sorry to have offended you.
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