Special Educational Needs: Speech and Language Disorders

(asked on 20th November 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he has taken to fund What Works and other research centres in (a) storing and (b) sharing evidence of interventions that support speech, language and communication.


Answered by
Nadhim Zahawi Portrait
Nadhim Zahawi
This question was answered on 28th November 2018

Between 2012 and 2018, the department funded the development and maintenance of a What Works virtual library of evidenced interventions to support children's speech, language and communication. This was funded through The Communication Trust. What Works helps practitioners and teachers find the most appropriate interventions for children and young people by providing a free and easily accessible overview of the evidence base for each intervention.

In addition to this, we are investing £5 million in partnership with the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to fund two rounds of an early years What Works fund. The fund aims to build and share better evidence on professional development that improves the learning and development of children from low-income families aged 0 to 5, particularly in early language, literacy and mathematics. The EEF is also running a trial of evidence-based home learning environment (HLE) support programmes in the North of England, focusing on supporting early language and literacy. The HLE trial will be a jointly funded project worth more than £5 million and is scheduled to run over three financial years between 2018 to 2019 and 2020 to 2021.

The EEF has also received £137 million of grant funding from the government to produce and disseminate evidence on What Works to improve the academic attainment and other outcomes of disadvantaged children and young people. The EEF has funded and evaluated several projects that focus on improving the speech, language and communication of pupils in early years and school settings, and findings from these studies are published on the EEF website: http://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk.

In November 2017, the department published an interactive What Works resource for those working with pupils and students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), which provides information and evidence-based practice that can be effective for SEND support all in one place. The What Works resource includes research on interventions supporting speech, language and communication and is available on the SEND Gateway: https://www.sendgateway.org.uk/r/sen-support-research-evidence-on-effective-approaches-and-examples-of-current-practice-in-good-and-outstanding-schools-and-colleges, and: https://www.sendgateway.org.uk/resources.effective-sen-support-a-guide-for-senior-leaders-in-education-settings.html. We provided this information to enable schools to determine which strategies are most effective for the pupils they are supporting, depending on the specific needs of the individual pupil.

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