There are many professionals within the early years sector who are understandably angry and frustrated by the government’s record around the early years and its crucial importance in children’s life.
These include issues around funding, the development of new frameworks without genuine sector consultation and the lack of focus on supporting pre-school settings.
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We do not seek to defend these actions, but we are concerned that the current frustration felt by many early years professionals has led to misunderstandings about a programme designed to support early language skills being widely shared, and that are unhelpful in supporting informed decision-making.
Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI)
Recently, the government announced that it is working with the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to scale up access to the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) for all state-maintained schools as part of the National Tutoring Programme put in place in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
A recent report from the Education Policy Institute found clear evidence that the narrowing of the disadvantage gap has stalled even without the added pressure of Covid-19.
As such, the priority for researchers, policymakers, educators and parents moving forward must be to work together to ensure all children receive appropriate support. However, the proliferation of misconceptions about the NELI programme may impact the potential benefits it can bring to children in need of support.
Early years interventions
To be clear, some of the concern expressed is understandable; schools want the best for their children and teachers are absolutely right to question whether a particular programme will fit within their context or align with their pedagogical approach.
However, the main issue appears to centre around the idea that NELI ignores the importance of rich communicative environments to children’s language development, and instead is based on a model of passive, didactic learning.
This is not the case. The programme is not designed to replace the language learning that takes place in high-quality communication-rich environments.
Impact of Covid-19
However, we know that pre-Covid-19, a large proportion of children were starting school with poorly developed language skills, particularly in areas of deprivation. This number may rise following the pandemic given the added emotional, financial and health concerns that many families have experienced. And we know that without support children who are struggling with the early stages of reading are likely to continue to fall behind while their peers continue to improve - a phenomenon known as the Matthew Effect.
Making sure the right support is available to these children is vital. There will be many pupils whose language development will be well supported by high-quality, differentiated classroom teaching/support or small-group-based support incorporated into the classroom.
However, there will also be children who will benefit from additional support through individual or small-group interventions in addition to what’s incorporated into the high-quality, language-rich classroom context; these are the children NELI has been developed for.
What’s the programme for?
The programme combines theoretical knowledge about children’s language development with effective approaches to developing children’s language that are frequently used by speech and language professionals.
It was developed by a team of researchers in collaboration with education professionals and speech and language therapists, and widely piloted and tested in schools and settings across the country.
While NELI is a prescribed programme, the sessions are designed to be interactive, multi-sensory and engaging, with flexibility built in for practitioners to adjust the sessions to the needs of the children.
NELI also incorporates a training package for staff, as well as a clear assessment procedure to allow teachers and teaching assistants to identify children who may benefit from taking part. This training will now take place online.
Remote learning
While the use of online training has yet to be evaluated, previous changes to the training model from researcher-led training to training by other professionals have been successfully managed and staff will still receive a high-quality package that will enable them to deliver the intervention as well as increasing their knowledge about children’s language development
There is now a great deal of evidence available from carefully designed studies that have shown the effectiveness of this approach, as well as consideration of the feasibility and acceptability of the programme to early years professionals as noted above.
This process of piloting and testing an intervention is an effective mechanism through which both feasibility and acceptability are tested. As such, early years pedagogical experts have contributed to the continued design and development of the programme.
Research evidence
Currently, through the EEF, the programme has been trialled with 1,500 children in 227 schools across England. The work is available to read on the Education Endowment Foundation website and through journal articles published by the programme developers.
Importantly, schools are being given the opportunity to take part in evaluating this current roll-out of NELI, thereby providing more opportunity for early years professionals to provide invaluable feedback on the implementation of the programme in their settings.
It is clear that the implementation of this programme will not address all of the complex issues faced by teachers, children and families as children return to school. Children starting school this year are doing so without having been able to take part in the usual preparatory activities, having experienced a period of huge instability and with their development being influenced by atypical environmental and social influences.
Work will need to be done to support children’s social and emotional wellbeing as they adjust to the school environment.
However, if school leaders are looking for a way to support the language skills of children in reception they now have supported access to a programme which they are confident can make a difference.
We know that those same school leaders who have successfully navigated their schools through the most challenging six months of education in recent times, will be well placed to make discerning decisions about what is best for their school.
One tool among many
As such, where adopted, NELI should be used as part of a wider language-rich strategy across the school with a focus on developing children’s communicative competencies as a valued outcome. NELI does not replace high-quality communicative interactions in our settings and classrooms - but it can help accelerate the language development of children in need of additional support to enable them to access these interactions better and take advantage of them. There is no magic bullet, but why not have as many tools in your arsenal as you can?
Developing, designing, piloting, refining, trialling, evaluating and delivering interventions in schools is a team sport - it takes the blood, sweat and tears of many to create something with the potential to do so much. Science and education working together in a collaborative partnership is the key to this and we should be embracing the process.
We would urge educators, researchers and policymakers to work closely together to identify the most effective ways to support children in the classroom as we move into the post-Covid era.
Making available high-quality evidence-based interventions is a positive move, but we would encourage all those involved in designing and implementing these interventions to continue to monitor their effects across different cohorts and in different contexts in order to ensure all children receive the support they need.
Claudine Bowyer-Crane is associate research director at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
Megan Dixon is director of research and development at the Aspire Educational Trust and headteacher of Sandbach Primary Academy (acting)
Rob Newton is associate strategic director at Huntington Research School and social mobility project manager at City of York Council. He is an experienced school leader and most recently acting headteacher of an infant and nursery school.
Silke Fricke is a senior lecturer in the Division of Human Communication Sciences, University of Sheffield.
Both Claudine Bowyer-Crane and Silke Fricke are co-authors of the NELI programme
