Two-thirds of primary schools took part in Covid recovery programme for four and five year olds

Almost 11,000 schools – or two-thirds of state-funded schools in England with reception pupils – took part in a government-funded roll-out of a programme to support four- and five-year-olds who would benefit from additional support with their language skills, according to an independent evaluation published by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) today.

The Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) was offered to state-funded primary schools across two school years (2020−21 and 2021 – 22). School recruitment was led by a team at the Department for Education. The EEF and Nuffield Foundation oversaw the roll-out of the first and second years of delivery respectively, with a team based at the University of Oxford and then at the university’s spinout organisation OxEd and Assessment, managing the delivery of the programme. The roll-out was supported by Oxford University Press, who helped with supplying resources to schools.

Both years of activity were funded by the Department for Education as part of their wider COVID-recovery efforts. A team from RAND Europe was commissioned to conduct an independent evaluation of the scale-up, through surveys, interviews, focus groups and data analysis.

Developed by researchers at the Universities of Oxford, Sheffield and York, NELI trains teaching assistants or early years educators to deliver scripted individual and small-group language sessions to four- and five-year-olds identified as needing additional support over the course of 20 weeks.