Nursery World - Young children's understanding of language nearly back to pre-pandemic levels

A new study suggests that young children’s understanding of language is nearly back to pre-pandemic norms, despite ‘added pressures on today’s families’.

The first report of the DfE commissioned Children of the 2020's study has been published PHOTO: Adobe Stock

The first report from the Children of the 2020s study, published by the DfE and led by UCL in partnership with Ipsos and the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and Birkbeck, University of London, finds overall, nine-month-olds understood an average of 14 out of 51 common words. It says this is similar to pre-pandemic norms.

The study follows more than 8,500 families and their babies, born in England between September and November 2021. According to the DfE, it is the first long-term, nationally representative study of babies since the UK Millennium Cohort Study that was launched more than 20 years ago.

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