The first Deaf unit established in the Waikato, New Zealand and based in the City of Hamilton in the early 1960s.

There were three schools for the Deaf around New Zealand between 1880 and 1959. The first school of the Deaf in Sumner, Christchurch – 1880, the second school of the Deaf in Island Bay, Wellington – 1944 and the third school of the Deaf in Titirangi, Auckland – 1942. However, the number of the Deaf children grew and there were no rooms for increasing growing numbers of the Deaf children around New Zealand.

From 1953, in Island Bay, Wellington, the Deaf children relocated to a new residential school in Fielding and the school called ‘St Dominic’. From 1952, in Titirangi, Auckland, the Deaf children relocated to a temporary school in Mount Eden, Auckland until 1958/59. From 1958/59 to the present year, the new residential school is in Kelston and it called Kelston Deaf Education.

In Waikato, the Hamilton West School built-in 1864 and is one of the oldest schools in New Zealand. The Deaf Unit established in late 1961 with a few Deaf children – six. There were many Deaf children grew quickly from 1962 due to influx with the rubella epidemic but the earliest rubella epidemic started in 1939 as a suspected rubella epidemic. There were several extensive outbreaks of congenital rubella syndrome in 1946 (South Island), 1941, between 1959-1960 and 1964-1965. I was one of the Deaf children who born in 1964.

Many parents of the Deaf children in the Central North Island do not want to send their Deaf children to Kelston Deaf Education or Van Asch Deaf Education. The Ministry of Education listened to the parents of the Deaf children and they hired a school inspector to source the schools around the central North Island. An interesting note to say that the school inspector happened to have a Deaf son in his family. The inspector found the perfect school which was the Hamilton West School and he spoke to the principal – Dr Dion ‘Darcy’ Dale and Mr CL Allen of Titirangi School of the Deaf/Kelston Deaf Education mid-1961.

Note: the capital ‘D’ as in Deaf than using a small letter ‘d’ in deaf and it is not the typing error. I used D with a capital letter to refer to people who have been deaf since birth or all their lives. They are prelingually deaf.

The word ‘deaf’ described or identify when people who have a several hearing problems and there is another word called ‘Hard of Hearing’.