Education Endowment Foundation:Early years support for schools

Early years support for schools

Opportunity for primary schools to receive EEF Promising Project, Nuffield Early Language Intervention, at no cost

The Department for Education has been working with the EEF and other delivery partners to make Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) available to state-funded primary schools. Online training and resources has been made available at no cost for schools where additional targeted support for oral language would be particularly beneficial. The aim was to support the language and early literacy skills of Reception pupils through additional targeted support provided by trained early years staff.

What is NELI?

The Reception NELI programme involves scripted individual and small-group language activities delivered by teaching assistants (TAs), or early years educators, to children identified as being in need of targeted language support. The 20 week NELI programme aims to develop children’s vocabulary, listening and narrative skills and in the last 10 weeks also involves work to develop phonological awareness and early letter-sound knowledge as foundations for early literacy.

We recommend reading the FAQs HERE to understand what is involved in delivering the programme. Particularly those who have registered to receive the newly developed online training programme this academic year.

Nuffield Early Language Intervention: Spreading

What is the evidence base?

NELI was initially funded by the Nuffield Foundation. This research, led by the programme’s developers, found that those who received the intervention had improved expressive language skills, including the use of vocabulary and grammar.

Following this, the EEF has funded two randomised controlled trials, both independently evaluated. The latest and largest, published in May 2020, involved 193 primary schools. Staff in the intervention schools received training from Elklan and resources from the Oxford University Press. This found that children receiving the NELI programme made the equivalent of +3 additional months’ progress in oral language skills, on average, compared to children who did not receive NELI. This result has a very high security rating: 5 out of 5 on the EEF padlock scale. Children receiving the NELI programme also made additional progress in early word reading and on a teacher administered language assessment.

We have supported a development pilot of an online training model to enable NELI to be delivered at scale. This has been made possible thanks to the financial support of ICG, which is supporting the EEF to scale up our Promising Projects.

How can I get involved?

The Department for Education gathered expressions of interest from schools who wanted to register to take part in delivering NELI during the academic year 2020/21. The portal for expressing an interest was open between 24 August 2020 and 30 October 2020 and is now closed. Schools were contacted before the end of December 2020 about their request to receive the programme at no cost.

While expressions of interest were invited from all state-funded primary schools, places were limited, and due to over-subscription schools will be prioritised based on their percentage of FSM eligibility.

The Department for Education has recently made a further ÂŁ8 million available to the Nuffield Foundation to provide NELI to state-funded schools with Reception pupils in the next academic year 2021/22. You can register here to be notified about when the next round of recruitment opens.

The NELI programme continues to be available for the costs outlined in the latest EEF report, where the programme received a cost rating of very low. You can purchase the programme resources from OUP and receive training from Elklan.