Since the pandemic, more children have been starting school without being “school-ready”.
In 2022-23, 33% of all children starting reception in England did not have the skills needed for success in school, rising to 45% of children receiving free school meals.
Language deficits are a significant part of a lack of school readiness. These include the failure both to understand and produce language, driven by a lack of vocabulary. These skills are important for regulating attention and behaviour. The inability to understand or express themselves makes engagement in school challenging for children.
Early childhood language difficulties have a long term impact. Children with identified vocabulary difficulties at age five are three times more likely to have mental health problems in adulthood, and are twice as likely to be unemployed.
What’s more, 81% of children with behavioural problems have language difficulties, and 60% of young offenders have low language skills. Language skill deficits are a major public health concern.
One evidence-based way to improve young children’s language development is through dialogic book sharing. This means that while looking at a book with an adult, children are prompted to speak by being asked questions.
These could be about, for example, what they can see, what they think might happen, how they think people in the pictures are feeling and whether they have had that experience themselves. Adults provide enthusiastic feedback to the child, praising them, as well as repeating what they say and expanding on it.
Using dialogic book sharing, adults become active listeners and encourage children to assume a progressively more active role in storytelling. Adults follow the child’s lead, encouraging them to actively participate in conversations and increasing both the number and complexity of questions asked.
Dialogic book sharing programmes for parents of younger children have shown that giving them the skills to support their children can increase children’s language skills.
Looking at books with adults can give children more frequent exposure to a wider vocabulary of words. Child-directed speech quality – the amount and quality of speech directed at children by their parents or carers – is a strong predictor of children’s vocabulary and language development.
My research with colleagues adds to this evidence. In one study, parents took part in dialogic book sharing sessions in small groups with their children at school.
It resulted in significant increases in observed positive parenting, such as using praise and encouragement, and child expressive language skills. Parents also reported significantly higher rates of child prosocial behaviour (behaviour that enables children to get on with others) and social and emotional ability – their ability to regulate their emotions and get on with others.
Another study trained school-based teaching assistants to deliver the programme to targeted children in school. The teaching assistants reported positively on the training, and results showed an improvement in the children’s reading skills.
Starting conversations
Most recently, my colleagues and I assessed the effectiveness of a dialogic reading programme, “Books Together”, that we developed based on existing research and pre-existing dialogic book sharing resources, as well as our own research.
The programme is intended to promote children’s school readiness by enhancing their language competence. The programme was delivered online across North Wales to 44 parents of three- to five-year-olds. The parents were identified by schools as having children who would benefit from some support for their language skills.
The underpinning principle is that parents use books to promote conversations with children in which they follow children’s interests. They start with asking children what they see in the pictures and then moving to questions such as: “how do you think that character might be feeling?” “Have you ever felt like that? "What do you think might happen next?”
The results showed increases in children’s school readiness, as well as improvements in their prosocial behaviour and their social and emotional abilities, We also found that the programme had benefits for parents. We found an increase in parents’ wellbeing and in their ability to to understand and predict their children’s needs and respond sensitively. All reported continuing to share books with their children.
It is possible to use any books for dialogic book sharing with young children, but they must not be treated as a story to be read, rather as a prompt to create discussion.
Evidence from these three trials showed benefits to children from supporting both parents and school based support staff to engage in book sharing with children. It’s a proven way to help the growing number of children arriving at school without essential language skills – and who are at risk of exclusion and poor long term outcomes.