Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to ensure that the Child Poverty Strategy will address the barriers which prevent children in poverty from accessing speech and language support.

The number of children in poverty has gone up by 700,000 since 2010, with over four million children now growing up in a low-income family. This not only harms children’s lives now, but it also damages their future prospects, and holds back our economic potential as a country.

My right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister therefore announced, on 17 July 2024, the appointment of my right hon. Friends, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the Secretary of State for Education, as the joint leads of a new ministerial taskforce to begin work on a Child Poverty Strategy. The government is committed to delivering an ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty, to tackle the root causes, and give every child the best start at life.

Tackling child poverty is at the heart of breaking down barriers to opportunity and improving the life chances for every child. For too many children, living in poverty robs them of the opportunity to learn and to prosper. Too many children, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds, leave primary school with unresolved speech, language and communication needs that have a lasting impact on their life chances.

To help tackle this now, the department will provide targeted support for teachers in early years settings and primary schools to support children with the development of speech, language and communication skills. More broadly, the department will work with teachers and curriculum experts to identify how oracy can be woven into lessons across the curriculum to support all children to succeed. Through this, the department aims to support teachers across the country to realise the benefits of using oracy to teach, by adding it to their repertoire and enabling more children and young people to flourish in life and work.

Early language skills are vital to enable children to thrive in the early years and later in life, including for all aspects of later attainment in school. To support early language skills, the department is investing over £20 million in the Nuffield Early Language Intervention programme (NELI). NELI is an evidence-based programme targeting reception aged children needing extra support with their speech and language development and is proven to help them make four months of additional progress, which rises to seven months for those eligible for free school meals. In July 2024, the department announced that funded support for the 11,100 schools registered for the NELI programme, which is equivalent to two thirds of all English state primaries, would continue for the 2024/25 academic year.