06/12/23
3 min read
Jane Rogers, Headteacher at Ellergreen Nursery School and Childcare Centre speaks about the major impact NELI Preschool has had on her pupils.
NELI preschool is the nursery counterpart of Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI), an intervention that boosted the language skills of children in reception. NELI Preschool is aimed at achieving the same goal with children in early years settings. It was trialled with three-and four-year-olds in 65 nurseries between 2021 and 2022. Evidence shows that children who participated made the equivalent of three months additional progress in their language development.
“Speech and language have always been an area that we’ve struggled to improve among our cohorts of children, and this was exacerbated during Covid,” explains Headteacher Jane Rogers, who has been in the post for 13 years.
“Although I’ve always steered away from very structured initiatives, after the disruption caused by the pandemic, we knew we needed to try something different to see if it would make more of an impact. And thankfully, my fears around structure and children sitting on the carpet for hours were dispelled within the first week. NELI Preschool doesn’t pull children away from continuous provision. In fact, it has enriched our provision and practice to such an extent that we’ve rolled out our own version of it for the remaining 19 weeks of the year.
“On the ground, we could see very quickly the impact the programme was having. Children love the special words and there was banter and competitions among staff about who could make a sentence with the four special words of the week.”
Ellergreen Nursery School, set in the disadvantaged area of Norris Green in Liverpool, ran the 20-week pilot between January and June 2022. The 120-place setting has three classes of three- to four-year-olds, with 10 members of staff trained in NELI Preschool.
The programme has been such a success that it has become embedded in the setting’s continuous provision. The Book of the Week is displayed on a table alongside small enticing props; the corridor is adorned with pictures from the book, and special words are displayed around the nursery.
“One of the books is about Franklin Frog, so we covered the life cycle of the frog as our topic. For Goldilocks and the Three Bears, there are bowls and a table in the home corner and children can make books in the writing area. The activities are interactive and floor-based, and we have a set time in the morning for the 15 to 20 minute whole-class shared reading session with the Book of the Week where the special words are introduced,” Rogers explains.
“They love seeing Neli, the puppet, and do a little Neli the elephant dance around the carpet. Neli sits on top of the whiteboard, which displays a digital version of the book, and keeps an eye on who’s listening, paying attention and answering questions. At the end, the teacher has Neli on her hand and they look to see who has been the best listener.”
“Five or six children per class were earmarked for the group and individual sessions during the initial screening process, undertaken by the NELI Preschool national coordinator. As a pilot setting, we didn’t get access to the scores but we could identify from the children’s speech and language difficulties that they got the right group of children.”
“We were delighted with the end-of-year data. We scored fourth highest nationally. Of the 52 children who were assessed using LanguageScreen, 13 children were ‘much below average’. Only two remained ‘below’ by the end of the programme. These two children had other identified needs which was a barrier to them making the same progress as the other 11 children in this group. The majority of children moved into the average range after the six-month programme, with nine children scoring ‘well above’ after six months of NELI Preschool, compared to none when they were baselined,” Rogers says.
“Another benefit for me as a Headteacher at a small school is that the programme offers consistency and structure to the week. It’s always difficult to monitor what’s happening in a class if one member of staff is off, but with NELI, the planning has been done for us, so someone can always pick it up. It gave us clear standards across all three classes which, for me, was really reassuring.’
