Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists' report, Building back better: Speech and language therapy services after covid-19 report, published 16 March 2021, what steps he is taking to ensure that support for pre-school children’s communication and language development is prioritised in education recovery plans.

As part of the government’s announcement on providing an additional £1.4 billion for education recovery, we announced a £153 million investment for high-quality professional development for early years practitioners. This includes new programmes focusing on key areas such as speech and language development, and physical and emotional development for the youngest children. This is in addition to £10 million for a pre-reception early language programme, and £17 million for the Nuffield Early Language Intervention, which improves the language skills of reception age children who need it most during the COVID-19 outbreak.

We have also been working in partnership with Public Health England and its partners (including the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists), the local government association and the Early Intervention Foundation to support local area health and early years partnerships (which includes schools, nurseries, and speech and language therapists) to work in a more integrated way and improve information flow to identify speech, language and communication needs as early as possible.