Save the Children highlights early language gap

According to a new report by Save the Children, which commissioned UCL Institute of Education to analyse data from the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile, currently in England one in four children fails to meet the expected level of language at the age of five.

This rises to one in three for those from low-income households. Children from low-income households refers to those that fall under the criteria for free school meals.

‘Ready to Read’ says this equates to a total of 148,000 five-year-olds who leave Reception each year without good language skills - 40,000 of them from low-income families.

The report is the second to be published by Save the Children as part of its Read On. Get On campaign. The goal of the campaign is to ensure that every child achieves a good level of early language development by the age of five by 2020.

Researchers from UCL Institute of Education also examined data from the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) to get a deeper understanding of the relationship between poverty and children’s early language development.

They found that the gap in language between advantaged and disadvantaged children begins from age three and persists through to when children start school. These children are also less likely to be able to read well at the age of 11.

Children who experience poverty persistently between the ages of nine months and five years face a much higher risk of experiencing language delays than those who experience poverty intermittently.

Boys continue to be more at risk of language delay than girls. According to the report, there is a 16 percentage point attainment gap between advantaged and disadvantaged boys reaching the expected standard at age five, compared to a 12 percentage point gap for girls.

Save the Children warns that without action to support children’s early language development so that many more children from low-income households have good language skills by the age of five, its 2020 goal will not be met.