Expressive Language

If around two children in every class of thirty have a language disorder — the figure the RCSLT draws from Norbury and colleagues' 2016 population study — then expressive language is a mainstream teaching issue in every classroom, not a SEND caseload matter.

• Expect the same core practices — modelling, structured talk, explicit vocabulary, thinking time — in every classroom, not only where a teacher happens to be interested.
• Check that assessment practice separates what a child knows from what they can currently express.
• Make sure quiet children are visible in your identification systems. They are the group most often missed.
• Treat communication as part of your behaviour policy's thinking, not as an exception to it.

• Identify the vocabulary each subject and year group is responsible for teaching, and revisit it deliberately.
• Design in structured opportunities for purposeful talk — explaining, persuading, presenting — rather than hoping discussion happens.
• Consider the listening environment: noise, acoustics and seating affect who can take part.
• Ensure alternative ways of showing learning are accepted across the school, not negotiated case by case.
• Where children use AAC, signing or symbols, make sure these are visible and used by adults too. The RCSLT is clear that these supports do not delay speech.

• Know your local NHS speech and language therapy pathway, its waiting times, and what you can put in place while families wait.
• Give the SENDCO sufficient protected time — the SEND Code of Practice frames the role as strategic, and it cannot be done in the gaps.
• Work with feeder early years settings; communication and language is a prime area of the EYFS and transition information is often lost.
• Track outcomes for children with identified communication needs separately, and be willing to see what the data shows.
• Budget for training and for the resources that follow it, rather than for a programme alone.

1. Department for EducationStatutory guidance
   SEND Code of Practice: 0 to 25 years (2015)

   Names communication and interaction — including speech, language and communication needs — as one of the four broad areas of SEN, and sets out the graduated approach schools must follow.

2. Department for EducationStatutory guidance
   Early years foundation stage statutory framework (current version)

   Communication and language is one of three prime areas; providers must give children a language-rich environment and opportunities to express themselves.

3. Department for EducationProfessional guidance
   Development Matters: non-statutory curriculum guidance for the EYFS (2023 revision)

   Describes typical progression in listening, understanding and speaking. Explicitly not a checklist, and not statutory.

4. Education Endowment FoundationResearch summary
   Oral language interventions (Teaching and Learning Toolkit)

   Rates oral language approaches as high impact for very low cost, based on extensive evidence. The Toolkit is periodically revised, so check the live page for the current impact estimate rather than quoting an older figure.

5. Education Endowment FoundationResearch summary
   Preparing for Literacy: improving communication, language and literacy in the early years (2018)

   Recommends high-quality adult–child interaction and structured language development, and notes the recommendations may also apply to older pupils who have fallen behind.

6. Education Endowment FoundationResearch summary
   Improving Literacy in Key Stage 1 (2017, updated)

   Places developing pupils' language capability — vocabulary, listening and structured talk — among the foundations of early reading and writing.

7. Education Endowment FoundationResearch summary
   Improving Literacy in Key Stage 2 (2017, updated 2021)

   Links spoken vocabulary and structured discussion to reading comprehension and writing composition across KS2.

8. Royal College of Speech and Language TherapistsProfessional guidance
   Clinical information: developmental language disorder (DLD)

   States that DLD affects around 7.6% of children — roughly two in a class of thirty — and describes its impact on understanding and using language.

9. Norbury, Gooch, Wray, Baird, Charman, Simonoff, Vamvakas & PicklesResearch evidence
   The impact of nonverbal ability on prevalence and clinical presentation of language disorder (SCALES study), Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (2016)

   The peer-reviewed population study behind the 7.6% figure. It concerns language disorder overall — receptive and expressive — not expressive difficulties in isolation.

10. Royal College of Speech and Language TherapistsProfessional guidance
    Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC): position statement (2024)

    Defines AAC — signing, symbols, boards, speech-generating devices — and summarises the evidence base. States that AAC supports rather than delays spoken language.

11. Royal College of Speech and Language TherapistsProfessional guidance
    Augmentative and Alternative Communication: overview (2024)

    Plain-language explanation of AAC for families and school staff.

12. Speech and Language UKProfessional guidance
    Ages and Stages

    Qualitative descriptions of typical speech, language and communication development by age band. Ranges, not norms — individual variation is expected.

13. NICEProfessional guidance
    Early years: promoting health and wellbeing in under 5s (QS128), quality statement 2: speech and language (2016)

    Its rationale notes that children with communication difficulties are at increased risk of social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. The statement itself concerns early identification, not primary-age provision.

14. I CAN and RCSLTProfessional guidance
    Bercow: Ten Years On — an independent review of provision for children and young people with SLCN (2018)

    National review finding awareness of communication needs low and provision across England uneven, with recommendations on identification, workforce and whole-school practice.

15. Public Health EnglandProfessional guidance
    Best start in speech, language and communication (2020)

    Guidance and supporting evidence on early identification of communication needs. Early-years focused; useful background for primary schools working with feeder settings.