Nursery World - Coronavirus: ‘Concerning’ impact on language development and PSED among four-to five-year-olds

Reception class children are struggling with language and communication and personal, social and emotional development, concerned teachers have told researchers looking into the impact of Covid-19 disruption on primary school starters.

Three-quarters of the primary schools surveyed said that children starting in Reception last September needed more help with language skills than in the previous academic year

Of the 58 primary schools surveyed across England as part of an ongoing Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) funded study, 76 per cent said that children starting school last September needed more support with communication than in previous years.

Teachers pinpointed the three areas of development that children were struggling with:

The news comes as the EEF announced that two-fifths of primary schools in England have signed up to take part in the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) programme to support four- and five-year-olds, whose early language and literacy development has been most affected by the pandemic.

This means that 62,000 reception-age pupils in 6,672 schools will benefit from the intervention, which has been proven to increase the language skills of four to five year-olds by an additional three months.

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