Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many schools have signed up to the Nuffield Early Language Intervention programme; and what assessment has been made of the effectiveness of that programme.

Since the programme was introduced as part of the department’s education recovery response during the COVID-19 outbreak,11,100 schools (over two thirds of all primaries) have signed up to the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) programme over the academic years 2020/21 and 2021/22. The majority of these schools have free school meal rates above the national average. The full list of schools taking part will be published shortly.

The NELI programme has been extensively trialled, with three randomised control trials demonstrating its effectiveness in raising language and literacy outcomes for reception age children.

The Education Endowment Foundation plans to provide an independent evaluation of the second year of the scale up of the NELI. The research project plans to gather and share useful lessons about the programme itself, as well as broader lessons about offering educational programmes at scale to English schools.