Empowering Staff to Enhance oral language in the early years
The Project
Early language skills are one of the strongest predictors of later outcomes, particularly literacy. However, one in four children in England does not achieve the expected level of language development by the age of five, and this figure is even higher for disadvantaged children.
This project aims to improve outcomes for disadvantaged young children by supporting early years practitioners to offer high-quality language-learning environments. It will refine and evaluate an existing intervention (Talking Time), which targets a range of oral language skills. The intervention was effective in a small trial in inner London and will be enhanced to include professional development to support adult-child oral language interactions. Targeting children from settings in the most socially disadvantaged areas, it will be compared to standard practice in matched settings through a randomised controlled trial involving 600 children in 36 nursery classes.
The primary outcomes are changes in the children’s language skills and the language-learning environment of the classroom. Social emotional development and staff knowledge will be examined as secondary outcomes. The effects of child and setting factors will also be included in the analysis to capture barriers to implementation.
External collaborators include, Julie Dockrell (UCL) and James Law (University of Newcastle).
Resources
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More News
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NewsNew definition for bullying released to better support pupils and schoolsMay 8, 2025
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NewsNew trial will evaluate Talking Time programme for Early Years practitionersJanuary 25, 2024
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NewsReport published today provides evidence on what influences EAL learners to mitigate language learning lossMarch 17, 2021
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MediaProfessor Edward Melhuish in a TRT World Roundtable discussion on the return to schoolAugust 31, 2020
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NewsPutting children first: sharing research evidence to inform Indian education policy and practiceAugust 11, 2020
Project Details
More Projects
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Pupil interactions and networks in special schoolsSeptember 2024 - August 2025This project will work with three secondary special schools to collect peer network data to better understand positive and negative interactions between special school pupils.
-
Feasibility trial of an adapted anti-bullying programme for children in special schoolsOctober 2024 - September 2026This project will work with eight special schools to conduct a feasibility randomised controlled trial of anti-bullying programme KiVa-SEND.
-
Effects of Education Endowment Foundation interventions on protection from COVID-19 learning lossOctober 2024 - March 2025This project investigates whether and to what extent Education Endowment Foundation interventions had protective effects against learning loss due to COVID-19 disruption.
-
LangQuest-EY: A self-report educator questionnaire to assess confidence in language supporting practices in early years settingsJuly 2023 - March 2024Download the LangQuest-EY questionnaire for early years educators to report on their confidence in using language-supporting strategies.
-
Effectiveness Trial for the Evaluation of the Mathematical Reasoning Programme for Year 2 Pupils Using an Online Professional Development Training ModelFebruary 2024 - March 2026The Mathematical Reasoning (MR) programme aims to promote pupils’ understanding of numbers and number sense (encompassing additive composition of number and place value, and the inverse relation between addition and subtraction) and quantitative reasoning and problem solving (different relations that can be established between quantities, encompassing part whole or additive relations, and one to many correspondence or multiplicative relations).
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Online Professional Development for Delivering the Mathematical Reasoning Programme in Year 2November 2022 - October 2023This EEF-funded pilot evaluation aims to assess if the Online Teacher Training to implement the Mathematical Reasoning Programme is acceptable to teachers and effective in preparing them and their supporting TAs to deliver the programme.
More News
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NewsNew definition for bullying released to better support pupils and schoolsMay 8, 2025
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NewsNew trial will evaluate Talking Time programme for Early Years practitionersJanuary 25, 2024
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NewsReport published today provides evidence on what influences EAL learners to mitigate language learning lossMarch 17, 2021
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MediaProfessor Edward Melhuish in a TRT World Roundtable discussion on the return to schoolAugust 31, 2020
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NewsPutting children first: sharing research evidence to inform Indian education policy and practiceAugust 11, 2020