Government must provide free speech and language screening tool
Jane Harris
Friday, May 26, 2023
Last week, the Mayor of London announced a £4 million investment to support children with special educational needs in the capital who are at greater risk of engaging in crime than their peers.
The money will be used to train teachers to help children to “reason, argue and explain” and therefore close gaps in learning for primary school children who are struggling with talking and understanding words.
It's a big step forward for a politician of Sadiq Khan’s prominence to recognise the greater risk of children with speech and language challenges ending up in the criminal justice system.
Our 2022 report found that at least 1.7 million children face challenges talking and understanding words across the UK and almost three quarters of children in the youth justice system had speech and language challenges. Often no-one had recognised these children’s challenges until they ended up in court. It is such a huge waste for their futures and our society as a whole, if we leave them without support until they are in trouble. Young people with speech and language challenges are more at risk of offending but also struggle to understand the words used as part of the legal process which puts them at risk of repeat offending.
We all need to do more, including us at Speech and Language UK, to help parents and schools to recognise when children are struggling and get them the help they need.
Children with these challenges are failed early. Children who have poor language at age five are six times less likely to pass English tests at 11 years old than those with good language. They are also eleven times less likely pass maths. These early effects continue through their education, with only ten per cent of children with speech and language challenges in core subjects in year 11, gaining a 9-5 pass at GCSE in English and Maths, compared with more than 40 per cent of all pupils in 2019. They are also at higher risk of school exclusion and refusal, with almost a quarter of children with speech and language challenges refusing to go to school in the past two years according to the parents we surveyed. This combination of poor education, exclusion and refusal can be toxic for their life chances.
We can change this. We need the Westminster government to follow the Welsh government and commission a tool so that schools can screen children for speech and language challenges for free and track their progress. At the moment, schools end up paying up to £100 per child just to find out if they are struggling. That is a huge barrier for many schools given their budget constraints. A free tool would mean they could spot who is struggling and then put in place solutions. At Speech and Language UK, we are working with academics to develop this for Welsh schools and early years settings – we think children in England deserve the same.
At the same time, we need better training for teachers given that a huge number of their pupils are experiencing speech and language challenges. Many tell us that the majority of their pupils are now struggling with talking and understanding words. Yet 50 per cent of recently trained teachers say they have not had enough training in this area. This mismatch is bound to lead to worse futures for these children.
The mayor’s £4m investment is a step in the right direction, but we need to do more so that every child in the UK facing challenges talking and understanding words gets the help they need. We are going to keep working to make this a priority for all politicians.
Please help us do this by signing our pledge to show this matters to you.
Jane Harris is chief executive of Speech and Language UK.
