School children are being punished for speech delay

The strict behaviour policies means children who can't follow the explanation of complex and unnecessary rules are constantly being punished.

Speech delays in children, an illustration by Jenna Cox for The Lead

For eight years, Lauren dedicated her life to shaping young lives as a teacher working in inner-city schools in the East Midlands. As well as classroom teaching, she also specialised as a special needs coordinator, supporting neurodiverse and learning disabled children to thrive alongside their peers.

Six months ago, she quit the state sector and now works in an independent specialist school working with children with high learning needs. What drove her out was not the long working hours or high stress of teaching in mainstream education, but the pain of constantly seeing children who struggled being needlessly sanctioned by school leaders for minor offences. She couldn’t go on working to uphold a set of school rules she just didn’t agree with.

Lauren’s experience echoes the concerns of teachers nationwide. According to a study commissioned by Speech and Language UK, and undertaken by researchers YouGov, 78 per cent of teachers said children with speech and language challenges are being punished at school because of their difficulties with communication.

“The system and the policies they’re working with aren’t right,” Lauren explains. “When [children] are getting sanctioned because of things they can’t control because of their needs, it’s heartbreaking. I’ve had children saying: ‘What’s wrong with me, why am I broken, why can’t I be fixed?’”

Lauren says she and her former colleagues would often refuse to take sick days even if they were extremely unwell, in order to protect children with SEN [special educational needs] in their care from being punished for minor misdemeanours such as forgetting to bring the right stationery to school.

“Morally and ethically, it’s really hard,” she says. “You can see a child that’s got a sanction after sanction after sanction, and as the school years go on you see them become more withdrawn and you see their attendance drop.”

There are an estimated 2 million children in the UK with speech and language difficulties, and according to the YouGov study half of teachers (49 per cent) say they have not had sufficient training to support children with these skills in their classroom. Almost the same percentage (46 per cent) said they felt their behaviour policy did not prioritise children’s speech and language skills. This is being picked up by parents too: 44 per cent of families say their child has been punished as a result of lack of support for speech and language.

Punishments for those who struggle to comprehend and follow rules can range from detentions or isolation periods to suspension or even, after multiple misdemeanours, exclusion. This means more time out of the classroom, even though children with speech and language difficulties are known to be six times more likely to fall behind in English and 11 times more likely to fall behind in mathematics.

Lauren says teachers are disillusioned by rules-based systems that effectively punish pupils with existing challenges for engaging in their education.

“There may be a hands-up policy, but even if you’re a child with speech and language difficulties and you shout out the answer you get punished anyway. They think they’re doing the work: they can be very literal thinkers, that can come with speech delay, and they just cannot process that information.”

The issue is set to grow as the number of children diagnosed with speech and language difficulties is growing each year. Experts say this is down to the impact of COVID in early childhood for the current primary school cohort – which restricted the amount of time toddlers and young children had to socialise with peers – as well as the effect of growing poverty on child development. Children who are developing early languages have to work harder to be understood by those outside their family and close circle, so time spent in isolation has caused delays in speech and language for many during lockdowns.

The problem is compounded by the shortage of speech and language therapists [SLTs] working in state schools. SLTs have the largest vacancy rate inside the NHS, running at around 20 per cent, as so many are leaving the public sector to go into private practice.

According to Jane Harris, chief executive of Speech and Language UK, the problem is bigger than many parents and even SEND specialists realise, and has been made more acute by the lack of support from the Department for Education [DfE]. In the department’s current guidelines for schools on behaviour management there is no example of reasonable adjustments to the basic policy for children with extra needs.

Jane Harris of Speech and Language UK

The result is that children feel the system is stacked against them, and react against that.

“They might make a really small mistake, they might bring the wrong coloured pencil, they might not have finished their work on time or they might not keep their eyes on the teacher in a school where you’re meant to track the teacher. They might get detention or a temporary exclusion,” she explains.

“Children become quite angry. If someone explains a rule to you and you don’t understand and then you break it, I don’t think people think that’s your fault. The other thing that can happen is that children can get really withdrawn and they disengage from activities. Neither of those things is good for their education.”

In response to the findings, Speech and Language UK is calling on the government to review behaviour management guidelines distributed by the DfE in its forthcoming reform of education and SEND support, to ensure fairness for all children.

“Teachers are left in the lurch,” Harris says. “Speech and language issues [affect] one in five in their classrooms and they haven’t been given enough training in the area.”

What can you do?

The 'Support Not Sanctions' campaign calls on the education secretary Bridget Phillipson to ensure that all state schools have a behaviour policy which is inclusive for all children, provide teachers with the tools to support children without punitive policies in place and also train every classroom teacher to recognise the signs of undiagnosed speech and language challenges.

You can help Speech and Language UK fight for a fairer education for pupils who have a speech and language disorder or delay by signing their petition here.

You can also write to your local MP encouraging them to put pressure on Phillipson to focus on speech and language as part of its review of support for children with special education needs and disabilities, including a review of the pay and job roles of speech and language therapists working inside the NHS and state school system so fewer are lost into private practice. ■

About the author: Hannah Fearn is a freelance journalist specialising in social affairs. She was comment editor of The Independent for seven years, and has previously worked for The Guardian, Times Higher Education and Inside Housing. She has a special interest in inequality, poverty, housing, education and life chances.

At The Lead what’s happening in the education sector and the impacts on children, particularly from the Covid lockdowns, is a topic we return to regularly. From our Westminster Editor Zoe Grunewald spending time in the classroom with 14-year-old girls and hearing what life is like for them and their concerns about online harassment to Hannah Fearn’s in-depth reporting on the impact of home education and how it is growing in popularity, and the reasons why. And Ellie Broughton’s stark, exclusive, report and lifting the lid on how children are still being diagnosed with personality disorders. Help us to cover what’s happening in the education sector and also write at the cross-over point of health and education and search for progressive solutions by becoming a paid subscriber to The Lead.