A survey of 500 UK primary school teachers behalf of Save the Children and the Read On. Get On. campaign.
- Seven in ten primary school teachers (71%) say it is common for children to arrive in Reception without the appropriate level of speech and language skills. Poor behavioural skills (70%), social skills (67%) and numeracy skills (67%) are marginally less likely to be common.
- Teachers see children in Reception struggling with several aspects of speech and language: four in five (81%) say children struggle with reading words or sentences, and three quarters (75%) say speaking in full sentences is a struggle.
- Teachers think poor speech and language skills impact schools in several ways: greater workload is most likely to be considered to have an impact (79%), followed by the use of significant resources to help children catch up (73%).
- Teachers indicate that poor speech and language skills have a series of damaging implications for children: four in five say that children with poor skills in this area cannot articulate what they want or need (81%) and struggle to learn to read (80%) or understand and follow instructions (79%).
- Long-term implications are also indicated by teachers for children with poor speech and language skills: more than half say that these children struggle with all subjects (56%) and fall further behind in their learning (67%).
Date Published: 20th November 2015
Client: Save the Children
Methodology
ComRes interviewed 504 British primary school teachers online between 12th and 21st October 2015 in the UK.