is located in Truro Street,
Sumner ,
Christchurch ,
New Zealand . It is a residential special school for deaf children, as well as a resource centre providing services and support for mainstream students and their teachers. Formerly called '''Sumner School for the Deaf''', the school was renamed in 1995 in honour of its first Principal, Gerrit van Asch.
The school was founded in 1880 and it claims that it "was the first fully government funded school for the Deaf in the world."
When it was Sumner School for the Deaf, during the
1950s and
1960s , the philosophy of the staff was to prevent the students from using
Sign Language and force them to learn to lipread and speak. Nowadays, New Zealand Sign Language, New Zealand's third official language, is encouraged at the school.
