CEY1489

Written evidence submitted by Speech and Language UK

Introduction

We welcome the opportunity to contribute to this hearing and commend the Education Committee for providing a forum for this important discussion. At Speech and Language UK we appreciate that the cost-of-living crisis is impacting people’s lives in many ways, and the government is having to consider its spending choices carefully, but we believe that Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) must be a priority. Our organisation’s mission is to give children and young people the skills they need with talking and understanding words, so they aren’t left behind, waiting to be understood. We do this by creating tools and training for schools and nurseries, giving advice and guidance to families, and advocating in Westminster and the devolved institutions for greater recognition and support for speech and language challenges.

What we find time and time again is that early intervention reaps the best results in the long term for a child’s development. We need more early years care providers, who have the training necessary to recognise speech and language challenges and have interventions they can use and resources to draw on to give the child the best possible chance when entering primary school. We also believe that through services like Family Hubs and good quality public information campaigns, parents and carers themselves should be taught about how talking and understanding words develops in early childhood and given support to develop good habits around communicating with their babies.

We have addressed four of the questions in the call for evidence that specifically look at early years provision.

What challenges do early years providers face in terms of workforce, including recruiting, and retaining qualified staff, and the barriers faced by individuals joining the profession? To what extent has the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated workforce challenges?

The UK government and Ofsted have identified that there has been a steady decline in the number of childcare providers across the board since 2015, with 5,400 leaving the profession between August 2021 and August 2022. As things stand, we now have 10,600 fewer childcare providers than we did in 2019.[1] However, the Government’s Early Years Professional Development Program will mean that 10,000 of the remaining workforce are being given training to improve the teaching of children’s early language, maths and social-emotional development. That’s 15% of the current Early Years workforce, who will hopefully be able to reach as many as 20,000 children.[2] We are working with DfE to deliver this training and it is certainly a step in the right direction.

A workforce properly equipped to identify difficulties with talking and understanding words early, with resources at their disposal to intervene can help transform children and young people’s lives. We know that children’s futures are jeopardised if they don’t get the help they need. Children with language disorders in pre-school and early primary years are about twice as likely to develop social, emotional and mental health difficulties.[3] Children who have poor language skills at age five are also six times more likely to fall behind in English and eleven times more likely to fall behind in Maths[4], creating future challenges for primary and secondary education.

After the last few years, with lockdowns and disruption to the lives of young people across the UK, the number of children with speech and language challenges has increased dramatically, and there have not been adequate interventions so far to help address this problem. Despite the Government’s covid recovery programmes, the number of children estimated to have speech and language challenges has increased from 1.5 million in 2021 to 1.7 million in 2022. This has a knock-on effect on children's behaviour and well being, which means that early years staff find they are dealing with an increasingly challenging group of children without the knowledge and resources to support them. This leads to retention issues as staff feel they can't cope and don't know how to help and so leave the profession. Proper training and an expanded specialist workforce will help more generally with staff retention.

A well-trained and sufficient workforce can deliver life-changing interventions to children. For example, our Early Talk Boost programme has been found to resolve speech and language challenges for half of participants after nine weeks of three half hourly sessions pe week, delivered by a nursery worker or other non-specialist. Without sufficient staff though these interventions become impossible to deliver, leaving children without the skills they need to develop.

A number of barriers currently stand in the way of the workforce being sufficient to support children with speech and language challenges. These include:

• insufficient supply of general early years staff, exacerbated by both lack of funding and cost of living pressures
• the insufficient number of speech and language therapists and other specialists being trained to meet demand
• the failure to retain current workforce and support it to further develop their skills, with some leaving the public sector
• an increased demand for support in general and in more complex cases in particular
• responding to the pressures of COVID-19 which has exacerbated pre-existing demands on the specialist workforce and increased waiting times to access them. 

While these are difficult challenges to address, we do not believe that changing childcare ratios is the right answer. This will only lead to normalising an insufficient level of staff. Children with speech and language challenges need sufficient staff to give them new skills and help them resolve developmental gaps. As set out in the Early Years Recovery briefing the National Children’s Bureau, ourselves and other child focussed organisations published, the government should create a Children’s Workforce Strategy that addresses the need for a sufficiently resourced and skilled community-based practitioner and workforce who can reach parents who might not otherwise engage. The strategy should seek to signpost specialist services, and offer support to parents with less entrenched or urgent needs, freeing up capacity in specialist teams.[5]

Whether the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) system is meeting the needs of pupils with Special Educational Needs or Disabilities (SEND), and the improvements that could be made to better support young children with SEND within early years provision.

The SEND Green Paper: Right Support, Right Place, Right Time identifies from the DfE’s own figures that Speech, Language and Communication Needs form the largest group of children identified with SEN in Primary schools (34%).  The review considered a child’s journey through the SEND system - from early years through to further education and identified a negative cycle which begins in early years and mainstream schools where, despite the best endeavours of the workforce, settings are frequently ill-equipped to identify and effectively support children and young people’s needs. Children and young people’s needs are identified late, then escalate and become entrenched. In some cases, a child or young person may be incorrectly identified as having SEN when in fact they have not had sufficient access to high-quality teaching, particularly in supporting speech and language. We agree with this analysis.[6]

Further data makes it clear that the system is not meeting the needs of the 1.7 million children with speech and language challenges.

Research shows that in some parts of the country up to 50% of children start school struggling to talk and understand words.[7] If they continue to struggle, this will affect their socialisation, mental health, educational and employment outcomes as well as their likelihood of ending up in criminal justice settings. But if their needs are identified early, low cost spoken language interventions can be put in place, allowing most to catch up with their peers, improving their outcomes and saving on costly public services. Evidence shows that on average, pupils who take part in spoken language interventions make approximately five additional months’ progress over a year, with some studies showing progress of up to six months for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.[8] Low cost spoken language interventions have an additional benefit as a screening tool: we know that those children who are still struggling at the end of an intervention will need longer-term help, which we can then plan and deliver at an early stage, thus preventing the escalation of need[9]. The growing number of children and young people with speech and language challenges suggests that this support is not currently in place at the scale required to meet needs.

The government should look to:

• Ensure all early years practitioners are trained to identify a child struggling with their talking and understanding words and know how to help as well as where to refer them for support and possible diagnosis.
• More widely, the Government should gather, record and publish data on children’s speech and language, including the Early Language Identification Measure (ELIM) data at a national and local level.
• Incentivise the new Integrated Care Boards to work with local authorities to ensure a joined-up pathway of advice and support for early language is in place right from the start of new parents’ journey, just as it is for diet or vaccinations.
• The government should require that new Family Hubs implement the guidance they developed in Best Start in Life.[10] Current guidance for Family Hubs actively disincentivises any interventions for children before the age of 3.

To what extent does the early years system adequately prepare young children for their transition into primary education, particularly children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The early years system is unfortunately letting some children down. Early language development and communication skills are recognised as primary indicators of child wellbeing due to the link between language and other social, emotional and learning outcomes. Being able to talk and understand words contributes to a child’s ability to manage emotions and communicate feelings; to establish and maintain relationships; to think symbolically and to learn to read and write. Without support, children and young people with speech and language challenges are at risk of not being able to engage with primary and secondary education:

• 1 in 4 children who struggled with language at the age of 5 did not reach the expected standard in English at the end of primary school, compared with 1 in 25 children (at the age of 5) who had good language skills 

• 15% of pupils with identified speech and language challenges achieved the expected standard in reading, writing and mathematics at the end of their primary school years compared with 61% of all pupils 
• Only 20.3% of pupils with speech and language challenges gained grade 4/C or above in English and Maths at GCSE, compared with 63.9% of all pupils Social, emotional and mental health  
• 81% of children with emotional and behavioural disorders have unidentified speech and language challenges
• Children with vocabulary difficulties at age 5 are 3 times more likely to have mental health problems in adulthood and twice as likely to be unemployed when they reach adulthood[11]

In July 2018, the DfE announced the government’s ambition to halve in ten years the proportion of children who finish reception year without the communication, language and literacy skills they need to thrive, but since this their actions have been piecemeal at best.  Speech and Language UK has welcomed a number of different Government actions and initiatives aimed at meeting this goal.  For example, there is a strong focus on communication and language in the Early Years Foundation Stage for children aged 1-5, which sets out statutory expectations on early years providers. Similarly, we welcomed the centrality of communication and language development in the Early Years Professional Development Programme, which targets training to early years practitioners who work with disadvantaged children. Early evaluations have shown an increase in practitioners’ confidence in supporting children’s speech and language as well reported improved outcomes for the children who participants of the training work with.  This shows that progress can be made with the right focus and ambition. 

However, in 2021, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) conducted some research into specifically reception aged children and found that 73% of schools were worried about their pupil’s communication and language.  Our research also confirms that the education profession is worried that the right action isn’t being taken to address concerns – as many as 70% of teachers told us that the Government wasn’t prioritising this issue. This is up from 63% of teachers in our survey last year.

All these factors contribute to far too many children starting primary school too far behind, with needs that tend to grow more complex the longer they are left unaddressed. That fact is interventions at the earliest possible stage tend to be more effective, cheaper and better for the child.

The extent to which the reduction of Sure Start Children’s Centres has affected children and families, particularly children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and the role of Family Hubs.

The Family Hubs and Start for Life programme guide published in August 2022 states that “early language acquisition impacts on all aspects of babies’ and young children’s non-physical development” and contributes to their ability to manage emotions, make friends, and learn to read and write.  Yet, despite the stated importance of the first 1,001 days – from conception to age two – only parents of children three- to four-years-old are eligible for Home Learning Environment interventions which help support language development. We know that speech and language challenges can be identified earlier and that interventions before children reach the age of three can be life-changing. It is deeply frustrating that this guidance seems to disincentivise Family Hubs from providing interventions at the earliest stages.  

The early years are a key time for the development of talking and understanding words.  Research has shown that language at age two predicts reading, writing and maths when children start school.  It is therefore crucial that the Family Hubs and Start for Life programme addresses speech and language before children reach the age of three.  This is even more so if the Government is to meet its target of 90% of primary children to reach the expected standard in literacy and numeracy, a commitment recently reaffirmed by the Prime Minister.  

Children learn to talk by being spoken and listened to.  Babies, even before they are born, have been shown to be sensitive to words they hear around them, especially their mother’s voice.  Yet many parents are unaware of the importance of early language experiences and midwives often lack the time or relevant knowledge to support new parents with this.  Put simply: promoting the development of talking and understanding words at age three is not early enough. 

We want to see the statement in the Family Hubs and Start for Life programme about the importance of language acquisition honoured. In 2019 the DfE launched Hungry Little Minds, a three-year campaign to encourage parents and carers to engage in activities that support their child’s early language and literacy. The intention behind this campaign is laudable: aiming to prevent speech and language challenges by giving parents ideas and games to help their children develop their talking and understanding of words. We have not seen a detailed evaluation of this campaign, which is urgently needed. This needs to include some thought to those families who are digitally excluded, particularly given the cost-of-living crisis, or find implementing the strategies hard.  This and the BBC’s Tiny Happy People need to be part of an overall strategy to prevent speech and language challenges. The more we can prevent, the more we can direct resources to children with lifelong speech and language challenges who need ongoing and specialist support.  Both these programmes should be evaluated, and the learning used to ensure a joined up approach to messaging and support is provided for all new parents.

Final conclusions: there has been some recognition of the issue and some good attempts at solutions but so far it has not been joined up or done at a strategic level. Too much is left up to individual local authorities and sometimes individual settings. There is disparity nationally and between private and voluntary settings and maintained settings. There is also too narrow a focus on early language as merely supporting literacy when it is a core life skill in and of itself, which children need to acquire for a range of reasons.

Speech and Language UK calls for a national strategic approach to developing talking and understanding words from pre-birth alongside tools and training so that Early Years practitioners recognise and know how to support speech and language challenges.

January 2023