Headteacher Genna Hitchin explains how her primary school supports the increasing number of children presenting with speech and language issues.
"With a lot of our children it can be sentence structure," explains Genna Hitchin. "They speak of themselves in the third person, 'Fred drinks water', rather than 'I drink water'. And tenses tend to be inaccurate - they often speak in the present tense."
Genna, who is Head of School at Palace Fields, a one-form entry primary school in Runcorn, Cheshire, is describing the type of speech and language problems she and her colleagues regularly encounter. Speech sound development issues are easy to spot, she says, but identifying processing problems - if a child can't understand multi-step instructions because there's too much information to process, for instance - can be harder.
"For some of our children, many difficulties don't present immediately, and it takes time to see any gaps between them and their peers. Others, particularly girls, can be very good at masking problems, which sometimes don't become apparent until Key Stage 2."
Palace Fields serves a highly deprived community - with 48% of children on free school meals - but as our YouGov poll shows, it would be a mistake to conclude that the problem is confined to disadvantaged areas. Almost all the primary school teachers surveyed said speech and language issues could affect any child regardless of background and that they had worsened since 2020.
Genna agrees that speech and language issues have increased since the pandemic.
"The cohorts we are getting now are lockdown babies. They often don't know how to play together or interact together, or take turns in conversations."
The cohorts we are getting now are lockdown babies. They often don't know how to play together or interact together, or take turns in conversations.
The Big Book of Ideas that comes with WellComm provides interventions to help children get to the next stage.
The complexities of language
How big is the problem?
Fortunately, she says, "my colleagues have a very good understanding that speech and language issues aren't just a matter of sound difficulty and that they involve receptive as well as expressive language, including the processing side of things".
Her school screens children as soon as they join with WellComm - a complete speech and language toolkit, from screening to intervention. "The Big Book of Ideas that comes with the toolkit provides interventions to help children get to the next stage. Many can be applied in class, which means children don't have to be removed for a set intervention. And it helps with any referrals for speech and language, or looked after children, or those on a personal education plan."
Palace Fields is part of charity Right to Succeed's Cradle to Career initiative, which works in areas of high deprivation and aims to improve literacy among children and give families easy access to the support they need. The school uses WellComm alongside the New Group Reading Test (NGRT) and Pupil Attitudes to Self and School (PASS) measure in Years 5 and 6 to give teachers a whole view of each child and help them to provide personalised support. NGRT identifies and responds to reading skills then monitors progress, while PASS provides evidence of - and support for - non-academic barriers which may impact learning and engagement in school.
"We've been part of the programme for three years now and the benefits have been huge," says Genna. "With WellComm we can pick up any problems early on and, as the Cradle to Career extends into Years 7 and 8, we can see how our children perform in secondary school too."
Early identification is key
Genna, who has a degree in speech and language therapy, emphasises that it's incredibly important to identify any issues early and put interventions in place. "You want children to be able to feel they are being understood to stop them feeling frustrated, but you also want to be able to pick up any difficulties they may have processing language before they get further into the curriculum, where the cognitive load is much larger."
She also warns that it's easy to mistake speech and language difficulties for cognitive or behavioural issues. "In maths reasoning questions, for instance, there are a lot of processes to go through. If a child doesn't have speech sound difficulties, people may assume that it must be a cognition and learning problem, though actually it could well be a processing of information problem. And the exasperation of either not being understood when speaking or not being able to process quickly enough and plan your speech in a conversation can cause outbursts because children become frustrated."
Genna's top tips
What tips would Genna give other teachers who are tackling speech and language problems and who want to embed oracy throughout the school?
- Don't speak for the child. Let them finish - even if it's a long-winded story, or you know what they are going to say - let them finish.
- Always correct grammatical tense errors: "I ranned outside…," "So you ran outside, lovely…". Bounce back the words so they can always hear them spoken correctly.
- Invest in language-rich texts. Not complex texts, but texts full of language that children probably won't see normally.
- Identify key vocabulary in all lessons. Provide not only a definition but also the word in context, speak in full sentences, and provide synonyms.
- Never assume children know a word. "I remember doing a maths lesson and the example given was the number of chairs laid out for a pantomime, and about five of the children couldn't answer the question because they were too caught up not understanding what a pantomime was…".
