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Save the Children Read On. Get On. survey of primary school teachers

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.

  1. Save-the-Children_Teachers_October-2015 0.02 MB.