Conditions

Communicating for Life

Students who have speech, language and communication needs are not receiving the support they need to achieve their potential. Caroline Wright discusses the results of a new report that shows a decline in educational practices that support verbal communication skills development and highlights what can be done to improve this crucial area for many vulnerable students.
Young boy with letters floating from his open mouth

Communication is a crucial life skill which enables us to understand and to be understood. Communication skills underpin social interaction, our ability to understand and manage our emotions and our capacity to form relationships. In the very earliest years, exposure to language influences infant brain development and parental attachment. Later on in life, our ability to communicate impacts on our educational attainment, our employment prospects and ultimately, our life chances.

Just 15% of pupils with identified SLCN achieved the expected standard in reading, writing and mathematics at the end of their primary school years compared with 61% of all pupils (DfE 2018)

Children with poor vocabulary skills are twice as likely to be unemployed when they reach adulthood (Law et al. 2009)

Yet a new report, Bercow: Ten Years On, has found that too few people fully appreciate the importance of speech, language and communication, and as a result, many children and young people in England are not receiving the support they need to achieve their potential.

Since January 2017, the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) has been working in partnership with children’s communication charity ICAN to gather evidence from more than 2,500 people, and on 20 March 2018 we published our findings in the form of the Bercow: Ten Years On report. The name of the report refers back to the government-commissioned review led by John Bercow MP in 2008 (DCSF 2008).

Time for change

The past 10 years have seen a huge amount of change in England, including reorganisation of the NHS, increased autonomy for schools and the special education needs and disability (SEND) reforms. Bercow: Ten Years On highlights some areas of progress, but it is clear that much of the change over that period has not been for the better.

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