By Specialist Speech and Language Therapist Eleanor Harris
COVID-19’s calamitous effect on our children’s language development: bridging the language gap
Today it has widely been reported that the successive COVID-19 lockdowns may have caused a 25% increase in the number of children with SLCN (speech, language and communication needs) in our reception classrooms (4 and 5 year olds). The data has come from from SpeechLink and has supported earlier findings from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) study of 50,000 pupils. These findings mirror what our speech therapists are seeing in the schools that we work in. Higher referrals, higher SLCN and higher caseloads.
Why is this?
This is not fully clear, however, we can postulate. Over time, fewer words heard in interactions and conversations equals fewer words learned and used by the child. Less sentence structure and word grammar heard by the child around them in conversations and interactions equals less chances for the brain to hear and develop word and sentence grammar. Lockdown has meant parents juggling full time work and educating their children. Many parents (including me) have found this extremely hard and have resorted to a variety of screens to ‘babysit’ the children whilst trying to hold down a job during the lockdowns. Grandparents, family members, friends, who normally pop in for conversations and cups of tea have not been round. All those chances for word learning in overheard conversations and direct interactions have been lost. Depressed parents equals fewer words spoken, equals less language heard by the child.
What does this mean for our children?
Research tells us that there is a strong correlation between the language levels of a child starting school and their academic and eventual career achievements. Starting school with lower language levels than they otherwise should have done because of the COVID crisis may place these children at a disadvantage. This disadvantage could be long lasting.
Research about the ‘critical period hypothesis’ by Friedman and Rusou (2015) showed that in order to successfully learn a first, native language children must have a ‘neurologically prepared mind’ (i.e. well-functioning brain prepared and ready to take in the language stimulus). In addition to this they must also be exposed to sufficient syntax (simple and complex sentence structures) before the age of 12 months old, otherwise they will be at risk of syntax difficulties as they get older (difficulty arranging words into simple and complex sentences).
The good news is that this critical period is longer for word and vocabulary learning, with very rapid word learning up until the age of 5 and continued rapid learning through to puberty. This means that although the lack of language input and stimulus caused by the national lockdowns may have set back some children’s vocabulary development, with appropriate strategies to enrich their word learning and the introduction of some appropriate catch-up interventions, children with lower vocabularies due to this lack of language exposure could catch up. Thankfully this current research by EEF and by SpeechLink has shone a light on this concerning problem allowing schools to make use of the £1 billion of catch-up funding that the government is making available to schools.
Bridging the language gap
Generic interventions such as the ‘Nuffield Early Language Intervention Programme’ or ‘Talk Boost’ have good evidence behind them for improving early language skills. Schools can get their staff trained to deliver these programmes. Often ongoing, more individually tailored and personalised language development programmes devised by a Speech and Language Therapist may be necessary to address this gap. More and more school settings are commissioning their own in house speech and language therapy service to advise them on the best ways to support their pupil’s SLCN.
The future
The worry for me as a Speech and Language Therapist is not just the children starting school now with lower language skills than they should do because of the lockdowns, which is a big worry of course. More concerning to me are the young babies born in 2019 or 2020 that may have missed out on quality syntactic (sentence structure) input in their first year of life due to decreased language exposure during the year of lockdown. These will be the children that we will need to monitor closely as they develop their language skills over the next few years to make sure that their language learning skills have not been effected. Some of these children may need specialist support as they go through their education.
