Early years communication and language – policy context
The following extracts provide the current policy context on communication with babies and young children. Combined with research evidence, they contribute to the message that talking and communicating with children in the early years is vital to their development and well-being.
Also see:
Early Intervention: Good Parents, Great Kids, Better Citizens - joint report by Graham Allen, Labour MP and former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith
The Next Generation - report by Early Years Commission, Centre for Social Justice
Bercow Review
Rose Review
Overview of early years policy
Back to research and policy page
The Children's Plan, Building Brighter Futures Department for Children, Schools and Families, December 2007
Five principles underpin the Children's Plan including:
- government does not bring up children – parents do – so government needs to do more to back parents and families;
- all children have the potential to succeed and should go as far as their talents can take them;
- children and young people need to enjoy their childhood as well as grow up prepared for adult life.
1.57 10 year vision for children's health: young children thrive in the first years of life with more tailored support for parents and parenting and better early support for individual needs.
1.60 New research into brain development, attachment and the impact of stress in pregnancy confirms our view that pregnancy and the first years of life are the most important formative stage. Good health in this stage and services that work with parents, are critically important. DCSF and DH will work together to secure improvements in health, wellbeing and child development in pregnancy, infancy and the first years of life.
1.63 ….The early years are an important time to establish good habits of eating and active play.
1.71 Good social and emotional skills are vital for health personal development. They build resilience and reduce the likelihood of engaging in risky behaviour, and support educational achievement, employment and earnings, and relationships in adulthood.
1.72 We want all children to develop strong social and emotional skills from the early years on.
3.11 World class early childhood services enable young children to have the best start in life so they can take full advantage of later opportunities to learn and develop. Therefore, the Government's ambition is that every child by age 5 will be developing well and ready to start their next phase of learning, having the confidence and communication skills to access the primary curriculum. Our 2020 goal is that every child will be ready for success in school with at least 90 per cent developing well across all areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile by age 5. This will require us to build on the creation of a universal early years system, with a fresh impetus on improving quality, supporting parents and providing help earlier to those who need it most.
3.15 Reinforcing our commitment that no child is left behind, statutory early years targets have been introduced for local authorities to improve more rapidly the levels of achievement of young children most at risk of falling into the lowest group…..The targets for 2011 will ensure that expected progress is maintained for
all children and young people, including those who have previously fallen behind the most able measured by:
- the achievement gap between the lowest achieving 20 per cent of children and the rest at the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage.
3.16 Working with parents will be vital at each stage of children's development.
Box 3.3 Personalised teaching and learning. The distinctive feature of the pedagogy of personalisation is the way it expects all pupils to reach or exceed expectations, fulfil early promise and develop latent potential.
Key features include:
Talking to learn: Pupils are challenged to justify their answers by explaining their thinking. |
3.118 The Bercow Review into the provision of services for children and young people with speech, language and communication needs was launched in September 2007. The Review will consider improving information to parents to help identify issues early and encourage them to seek support; improve the skills of the early years and school workforce; promote better partnership working between health and local authority services' and ensure clear accountability in all services. In spring 2008 it will publish its interim report, reflecting the outcomes of its consultation, with a final report in summer 2008.
4.22 To gain the benefits of early years education, practitioners need to be working at the cutting edge of practice. We want to see early years practitioners and teachers securing core qualifications and continuously updating their skills and knowledge.
4.50 Sharing of expertise between schools Sure Start Children's Centres, early years and childcare providers and the health service helps improve the lives of young people and their families – by creating a higher quality, more seamless service designed around their needs.
We therefore propose to invest £10 million over three years to identify best practice and test new partnership models at locality level, piloting 0-7 partnerships in a small number of areas. 0-7 partnerships will operate within the Children's Trust and promote continuity for children and families from birth through to age 7. They will support stronger engagement with parents, which was identified as a key issue by the 0-7 Expert Group. We will work with a range of stakeholders to develop the pilots.
7.13 Making a reality of the vision for our children set out in the Children's Plan depends on parents, the community, statutory services, the voluntary sector and business working together to provide opportunities, tackle problems and transform the environment in which children grow up.
(The Children's Plan, Building brighter futures, December 2007)
For more information visit
www.dcsf.gov.uk/publications/childrensplan/
Early Years Foundation Stage (age 0-5)
Published March 2007 (statutory in September 2008)
A comprehensive framework for the learning, development and care of children in the early years the EYFS creates a distinct, coherent phase for all children aged 0 – 5 years.
Child Development Overview
- Birth – 11 months: Children are learning from the moment of birth. Even before their first words they find out a lot about language by hearing people talking and are especially interested when it involves themselves and their daily lives.
- 8 – 20 months: Building on their communication skills, children now begin to develop a sense of self and are more able to express their needs and feelings. Alongside non-verbal communication children learn a few simple words for everyday things and people. With encouragement and plenty of interaction with carers, children's communication skills grow and their vocabulary expands very rapidly during this period.
- 16 – 26 months: Pretend play helps children to learn about a range of possibilities. Adults are an important source of security and comfort.
- 22 – 36 months: In this phase, children's language is developing rapidly and many are beginning to put sentences together. Joining in conversations with children is an important way for children to learn new things and to begin to think about past, present and future.
- 30 – 50 months: Children's language is now much more complex, as many become adept at using longer sentences. Conversations with adults become a more important source of information, guidance and reassurance.
The 4 EYFS principles which guide the work of all practitioners are grouped into 4 distinct but complementary themes.
1. A Unique Child
Babies and children develop in individual ways and at varying rates. Every area of development – physical, cognitive, linguistic, spiritual, social and emotional is equally important.
A skilful communicator:
- Babies are especially interested in other people and in communicating with them using eye contact, crying, cooing and gurgling to have 'conversations'.
- Babies and children are sociable and curious, and they explore the world through relationships with others and through all their senses.
- Babies and children develop their competence in communicating through having frequent, enjoyable interactions with other people, in contexts that they understand.
- Children learn to communicate in many ways, not just by talking, but also in non-verbal ways such as gestures, facial expressions and gaze direction, in drawing, writing and singing, and through dance, music and drama.
2. Positive Relationships
Parents as Partners. Parents are children's first and most enduring educators.
Communication:
- All communication is important, including gesture, signing and body language. Actions can speak louder than words.
Supporting learning
Listening to children:
- Babies, very young children and those with speech or other developmental delay or disability may not say anything verbally, though they may communicate a great deal in other ways.
- Talking with children may take place in English or in their home language, in signing or through body language and gesture.
- Whatever form of communication is used, children need space and time to respond and to know that the practitioner is giving full attention and encouragement to their thinking.
3. Enabling Environments
The learning environment: A rich and varied environment supports children’s learning and development.
4. Learning and Development
The EYFS is made up of six areas of learning and development:
1) Personal, social and emotional development
2) Communication, language and literacy: Language for Communication is about how children become communicators.
- Learning to listen and speak emerges out of non-verbal eye contact, and hand gesture. These skills develop as children interact with others, listen to and use language, extend their vocabulary and experience stories, songs, poems and rhymes.
- Language for Thinking is about how children learn to use language to imagine and recreate roles and experiences and how they use talk to clarify their thinking and ideas or to refer to events they have observed or are curious about.
- Linking Sounds and Letters is about how children develop the ability to distinguish between sounds and become familiar with rhyme, rhythm and alliteration. They develop understanding of the correspondence between spoken and written sounds and learn to link sounds and letters and use their knowledge to read and write simple words by sounding out and blending.
- Reading
- Writing
- Handwriting
What Communication, Language and Literacy means for children:
To become skilful communicators, babies and young children need to be with people with whom they have warm and loving relationships, such as their family or carers and, in a group situation, a key person whom they know and trust.
- Babies respond differently to different sounds and from an early age are able to distinguish sound patterns. They use their voices to make contact and to let people know what they need and how they feel.
- All children learn best through activities and experiences that engage all the senses. Music, dance, rhymes and songs support language development.
- As children develop speaking and listening skills they build the foundations for literacy, for making sense of visual and verbal signs and ultimately for reading and writing. Problem solving, reasoning and numeracy
4) Knowledge and understanding of the world
5) Creative development
6) Physical development
(EYFS, 2007)
For more information visit
www.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/eyfs/
Every Parent Matters
Department for Education and Skills, 2007
2.1 Parents' influence is important throughout childhood and adolescence. At different times parents guide, encourage and teacher. Children learn from the example set by their parents. The support parents give for their children’s cognitive development is important, as is instilling of values, aspirations and support for the development of wider interpersonal and social skills. Recent research has shown the importance of parental warmth, stability, consistency and boundary setting in helping children develop such skills:
In the early years, parental aspirations and encouragement have a significant impact on children's cognitive development and literacy and numeracy skills.
3.1 How things go during pregnancy and the first years of a child's life can influence deeply that child's health, including patterns of healthy eating and physical activity, its wellbeing, cognitive development and emotional security. We have clear evidence as children move through their early years, of the positive impact of parental engagement on children's cognitive and social development; as well as on numeracy and literacy skills. It is a time of rapid brain growth and research has shown a direct link between the stimulation a child receives and their brain development.
3.3 Both international and UK evidence show us that high quality social and psychological support as part of universal child and family health services can have outstanding results in terms of outcomes and long term cost-effectiveness, particularly for families with high levels of deprivation.
3.6 The EPPE study showed that what parents do is more important than who parents are. Parents engaging in a range of activities with their child were all associated with higher intellectual and social/behavioural scores. These activities included:
- reading with your child;
- teaching songs and nursery rhymes;
- painting and drawing;
- playing with letters and numbers;
- visiting the library, museums and other places, as well as
- creating regular opportunities to play with friends.
6.2 The
Supporting Parents guidance issued in October 2006 asks each Local Authority to develop a strategic and joined up approach to the design and delivery of parenting support services in its area. It suggests that parenting support to deliver improved outcomes for children should be seen as a continuum from information, early intervention and preventative services through to the use of enforcement measures.
6.3 The guidance encourages the creation of a local strategy (working within the existing processes to develop and review their Children and Young People's Plan and Sustainable Community strategy) for designing, commissioning and delivering flexible and responsive local services that empower and support parents to become more confidence in improving child outcomes. It asks authorities to appoint a single commissioner to champion services for parents. The aim is to create greater personalisation of services that is more responsive to every child's and family's requirements.
(Every Parent Matters, 2007)
For more information visit
www.teachernet.gov.uk/docbank/index.cfm?id=11184%20
Children's Centres Practice Guidance
Department For Education and Skills, November 2006
Section 09: Speech and language development
- This section emphasises how crucial the early years are for language acquisition, particularly the substantial contribution of the first three years to children's development of key language skills by the time they reach early childhood.
- "The development and use of communication and language is at the heart of young children's learning; children need to be able to communicate effectively to learn and develop other skills."
- The importance of language skills in contributing to the development of literacy skills is recognised in the context of developing the ability to access the National Curriculum.
- Speech and language develop through interaction, with communication skills being developed through "adequate stimulation and response from others".
- 1 in 10 children under 5 years of age experience some degree of difficulty in learning language and communication skills.
- Children with communication impairments are at significantly increased risk of educational underachievement.
- Early intervention on speech, language and communication has been shown to produce the best outcomes.
Children's Centres should provide a range of activities to positively promote children's speech and language development including:
- providing a good environment for listening and attention
- adults talking and listening to children
- imaginative use of play and toy resources
- activities with music, song and rhyme
- storytelling and reading books
Children's Centre staff should:
- promote language acquisition and identify speech and language difficulties
- desirably have input from a speech and language therapist for at least part of the week
- receive training in language development from a speech and language therapist focussing on how the development of language and communication is underpinned by 4 key factors:
- experiencing good language models
- experimenting and learning through play
- developing attention and listening skills
- the ability to take turns
All practitioners can help to support children's speech and language development, both directly, and also by encouraging parents to:
- talk during everyday occurrences whilst they are occurring
- play alongside their children at their level supported by good language
- allow the child to take a lead and direct activities
- be expressive, encouraging eye contact and exaggerating intonation
- enjoy action songs, listening games, books and nursery rhymes
- reduce the pressure on the child by avoiding asking too many questions
- show interest and respond to whatever their child is trying to communicate.
The Section also provides examples of training programmes, e.g. Communicating Matters, and case studies, e.g. Boosting Language Auditory Skills and Talking (BLAST).
(Children's Centres Practice Guidance, 2006)
For more information visit
www.surestart.gov.uk/publications/?Document=1854
Children's Centres Planning and Performance Management Framework Department For Education and Skills, 2006
Annex B – Performance Indicators
Learning and development outcome:
Indicator: % of children who achieve a total of at least 78 points across the Foundation Stage Profile with at least 6 points scored in each of the personal, social and emotional development and communication, language and literacy scales.
(This reflects the current PSA target and local authority early years outcomes target under the statutory powers in the Childcare Act 2006).
(Children's Centre Planning and Performance Management, 2006)
For more information visit
www.surestart.gov.uk/publications/?Document=1852
The Children's National Service Framework (2004 )
This
is a 10-year programme intended to stimulate long-term and sustained improvement in children's health. Setting standards for health and social services for children, young people and pregnant women, the NSF aims to ensure fair, high quality and integrated health and social care from pregnancy, right through to adulthood.
At the heart of the Children's NSF is a fundamental change in thinking about health and social care services. It is intended to lead to a cultural shift, resulting in services being designed and delivered around the needs of children and families. The Children's NSF is aimed at everyone who comes into contact with, or delivers services to children, young people or pregnant women. There are 11 standards of which the first two are directly relevant to the development of young children’s communication skills.
Standard 1 – Promotion of health and well-being of all children through comprehensive family support services:
Working towards this standard will meet the national target (jointly set for DfES and the Department for Work and Pensions) to improve children's communication, social and emotional development, so that by 2008, 50% of children reach a good level of development at the end of the reception year in primary school (end of the Foundation stage of the National Curriculum).
Standard 2 – Parents and carers are enabled to receive the information, services and support which will help them to care for their children and to equip them with the skills they need to ensure that their children have optimum life chances and are healthy and safe.
This standard includes support for parents of pre-school children to help children develop secure attachments and maximise their health, social and emotional development through optimizing the quality of the relationship between parents and child.
(National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services, 2004)
For further information visit
www.dh.gov.uk
Every Child Matters (Government Green Paper)
Department for Education and Skills, 2003
The Government's green paper outlined the future of children's services. Agenda of reform to:
- support parents and carers
- early intervention and effective protection
- accountability and integration
- workforce reform
Sets out the five outcomes for children:
- being healthy
- staying safe
- enjoying and achieving
- making a positive contribution
- economic well-being
Key concepts include:
Common Assessment Framework: designed to avoid overlapping of assessments
Lead Professional: to avoid duplication and promote co-ordination
Multi-disciplinary teams: services to be based on needs of child rather than the providers
For more information visit
www.everychildmatters.gov.uk
Other relevant documents:
- Childcare Act 2006
- Inspection of children's services: Key judgements and illustrative evidence. Published by Ofsted, 11 August 2005
- The Children Act 2004
- Every child matters: Change for Children (2004)
- Choosing Health – Our health, our care, our say (Government White Paper) Department of Health, 2004
- United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
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