Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to provide (a) support and (b) incentives to state schools to use the Nuffield Early Language Intervention programme.

The Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) programme, which is part of the department’s education recovery response, has played an important role in improving children’s language and communication skills following the COVID-19 pandemic.

In September 2023, the Education Endowment Foundation published an independent evaluation of the programme’s impacts in 2021/22. This demonstrated that children who received the programme made on average the equivalent of four months’ progress in language skills, compared to children who did not receive NELI. Pupils eligible for free school meals made additional progress on average of seven months. It is rare to see this sort of impact from an educational programme on a national level, which is a fantastic testament to all those involved in delivering it to children over the last three years.

Since the programme was launched in 2020, just over 11,100 schools, over two thirds of all primaries, have signed up to deliver NELI. To increase the reach of the programme, the department has confirmed it will be funding all registered schools to continue delivering the programme in the 2023/24 academic year. To promote awareness and encourage uptake, the delivery partner will be engaging all registered schools through a mixture of regular communications, support, and targeted outreach. Furthermore, the department is working with the supplier on steps to engage and promote NELI to all schools this academic year and currently scoping activity for the 2024/25 academic year and beyond.