10 key reasons for our campaign

1. 75% of heads of nurseries and schools admitting three-year-olds are concerned about a significant decline during the last five years in children's language competence at entry.
(National Literacy Trust and National Association of Head Teachers (2001) Early language survey of headteachers)

2. Teachers' perceptions are that children's talking and listening skills have declined over the last five years - particularly the ability to speak audibly and be understood.
(Basic Skills Agency (2002) Survey into Young Children's Skills on Entry to Education, Wales: Basic Skills Agency.)

3. Too many children are receiving a '"disrupted and dishevelled" upbringing, according to Head of Ofsted, David Bell. As a result the verbal and behavioural skills of the nation's five-year-olds are at an all-time low, causing severe difficulties for schools. Many are unable to speak properly when they start school.
(Sunday Telegraph (2003) Schools chief: Parents have raised worst generation yet, 31 August 2003)

4. "A high proportion of children (41-75%) with identified speech and language difficulties in their pre-school years go on to have difficulties with reading skills during their school years."
(Royal College of Speech and Language Therapy (1999) Early Communication Audit Manual, London: Royal College of Speech and Language Therapy)

5. There is a suggested link between the home language experiences of children of low socio-economic status and their subsequent literacy skills development: "If reading success is so dependent on oral language skills, should we not be placing more emphasis on vocabulary and rich language environments in the home, pre-school and primary grades, rather than assuming that word reading skills alone will suffice?"
(Professor C.E. Snow (2001) The Centrality of Language: a longitudinal study of language and literacy development in low income children, Institute of Education, University of London)

6. Ann Locke at the University of Sheffield has highlighted "the enormous differences in the quantity of language addressed to children from different socio-economic backgrounds in their first two and a half years of life," and emphasises the fact that early spoken language underlies subsequent reading and writing.

7. An analysis of 350 Ofsted reports found that inspectors were concerned about the speaking and listening skills of half the four and five-year-olds starting school in September 2003.
(Times Educational Supplement (2004) From grunting to greeting, 30 January 2004)

8. "While children from different backgrounds typically develop language skills around the same age, the subsequent rate of vocabulary growth is strongly influenced by how much parents talk to their children. Children from professional families (who were found to talk to their children more) gain vocabulary at a quicker rate than their peers in working class and welfare families . by kindergarten, a child from a welfare family could have heard 32 million words fewer than a classmate from a professional family . children in professional families heard a higher ratio of encouragements to discouragements than their working class and welfare counterparts."
(Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley (1995) Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children, Baltimore, MD, USA:Brookes Publishing (revised January 2003))

9. A survey of nursery workers showed that 89% are worried that the occurrence of speech, language and communication difficulties amongst pre-school children is growing. The lack of adult and child time spent talking together was highlighted as the key reason by 92% of them.
(I CAN (2004) Nursery workers' poll says "Turn off the TV")

10. "Experts warn that the window to stimulate brain development closes quickly. In the first three years of life, the brain grows from 25% to 90% of its adult weight. And nearly 50% of a child's learning occurs in the first four years of life. Brain development is largely a function of stimulus. The more stimulus babies and young children get in terms of being read and talked to, the greater their capacity for language and literacy." (www.earlywords.net)