Continuing professional development - Learning to talk the talk

The range in language abilities in the very young is enormous. By the time children reach primary school, some have the seeds of bilingualism or even trilingualism, while others can struggle even to link two words together. Sadly, it is not uncommon for difficulties to arise: one in ten children in the UK have developmental difficulties with speech and language. Delayed language skills are linked to poverty - research showed in 2013 that this rises to more than half when children are in deprived areas.

In response to the Government's decision to make communication and language a prime area of learning in the 2012 Early Years Foundation Stage, children's communication charity I CAN devised a two-day Early Language Development Programme (ELDP) for practitioners, targeted at areas of deprivation. Sally McAlister, programme manager, explains the rationale. She says, 'We find that by the age of four the difference in the number of words that children from different socioeconomic backgrounds are exposed to ranges from 13 million to 32 million. By the age of five, vocabulary will predict economic success and outcomes by the age of 30.