Schools face a significant challenge in effectively supporting children with speech, language, and communication needs (SLCN). Research consistently highlights the far-reaching impact of poor oral language skills on literacy, academic performance, behaviour, and school attendance.
That’s why it’s essential for your school to have a reliable and efficient way to identify these needs for all children as they start school — as it’s the only way to identify every child with language needs, so that timely, targeted support can be put in place.
Although we recommend the above, we’ve been speaking to schools who say that many of them find this universal screening of all children challenging.
You spoke. We listened. Then made assessing faster
Developed over two years, we have radically evolved our standardised assessment of the understanding of language at school entry.
Dramatically shortening the time to screen the average class. We’ve made the essential task of identifying language difficulties on school entry far more efficient. With two out of three children in an average class completing the screening in only 10 minutes. Here’s how…
- All children will complete a short, 10-minute Stage-1 screener, specifically designed to highlight children who may be a risk of having language difficulties.
- Then children identified as being at risk will automatically go on to complete Stage-2 of the screener.
This will confirm whether the child has language difficulties and will provide more detail about specific areas of language need.
Increasing the accuracy in identifying language needs
Being confident in identifying speech, language, and communication needs is crucial and can mean that every child gets to flourish at school whatever their ability.
To enhance precision there are now two assessments, one focused on the first term and the other on the rest of the school entry year. Giving you the confidence that an accurate measure of understanding is reported for each child based on their age in months and where they are in the school year.
Having two assessments at different timepoints of the year, enables you to be far more accurate in measuring the language ability at those times of the school entry year.
We used standardisation at monthly intervals, rather than the more usual six-month age bands – for a far more accurate assessment at a time where language develops quickly. Meaning that at whatever age a child is assessed more accurate language levels can be obtained.
More meaningful progression measurements
We have also been listening to schools when they tell us they would like more ways of measuring progress.
The two assessments contain lots of different questions of the same level of difficulty that assess the same areas of language, but they also have some questions in common, that allows the child’s autumn assessment to be compared to their spring/summer assessment. This means that you can accurately compare a child’s performance from the start of the year to the end of the year.
Supported to be a tool for all
We’ve included training within the Infant Language Link package so that even non–specialist staff can start assessing and improving children‘s language.
Plus, as part of the Infant Language Link subscription, we have planned webinars with speech and language therapists to get you started and answer any questions you have for speech and language at school entry.
Find out more about Infant Language Link and book a FREE TRIAL