Van Asch Deaf Education Centre was located in Truro Street, Sumner, Christchurch, New Zealand. It was a special school for deaf children, accepting both day and residential pupils, as well being as a resource centre providing services and support for parents, mainstream students and their teachers in the South Island and the Lower North Island (south of Taupō).
The school was founded in 1880. Formerly called the Sumner Deaf and Dumb Institution, Sumner Institution for Deaf-Mutes and Sumner School for the Deaf, the school was renamed in its centenary year as van Asch College in honour of its first Principal, Gerrit van Asch.
In 2019, the New Zealand government decided to merge the school with Kelston Deaf Education Centre in Auckland to form one national school. This national school was named Ko Taku Reo.
History
Prior to 1877, there was no state assistance for educating deaf children in New Zealand. Wealthy parents could send their deaf children to schools for the deaf either in Australia or England or else privately hire a teacher to come out to New Zealand. Dorcas Mitchell was one such teacher who had trained in England to teach in sign language and then come to New Zealand to teach the four deaf children of Rev. Bradley, at Charteris Bay, in Lyttelton Harbour, certainly before 1870.
On 29 November 1877, the New Zealand House of Representatives enacted the Education Act 1877, which provided for free primary education for all children aged between 5 and 15 in New Zealand from 1 January 1878. Education was compulsory for non-Maori children between 7 and 13 but exceptions could be made for sickness or infirmity and children could be expelled for disruptive behaviour.
Establishment
William Rolleston, when he represented the electorate in 1878, proposed a school for deaf children in Parliament. The motion was agreed and the Government agreed to add funds to the supplementary estimates to establish an Institution for the deaf in Christchurch. This was the first time in the world a government had funded a residential school for educating people who were deaf, so could not speak.
Recruitment of a teacher
In November 1878, Sir George Grey, Colonial Secretary, wrote to Julius Vogel, then the Agent-General for New Zealand, in London, to recruit a suitable teacher from England. Upon seeing news of this correspondence in the Lyttelton Times, Dorcas Mitchell wrote to Grey seeking appointment and indicating she had intended to establish her own school for deaf-mutes. The Secretary of Education, John Hislop, visited Miss Mitchell in Lyttelton in March 1879 to see her proposed school, which he thought unsuitable. It soon became apparent that the school would be also be associated with an orphanage, which Rolleston felt was not what Parliament intended. Nevertheless, in June 1879, the Government assisted Miss Mitchell investigate other possibilities in Dunedin and Oamaru.
Appointment of the first director
In June 1879, Vogel informed Grey that Gerrit van Asch had been selected as the Institution's first Director. Van Asch, who was born in 1836 and had been specially trained in Holland and Germany in the Pure Oral method, before moving to England in 1859 to establish private schools for educating deaf mutes by spoken language and lip-reading only. The commissioners reported he was the only applicant, of seventeen, who was trained in the German system system, teaching lip-reading, speech, writing and reading concurrently. They also noted he also spoke English "without an accent". Of the other applicants, the Commissioners reported that 12 men were trained to teach with sign, and 3 men had no special training. (No mention was made of the abilities or gender of the remaining applicant.) He emigrated to New Zealand in October 1879 and selected the Sumner site temporarily, with intentions to move to a larger population center in the future.