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Customer Stories

The NELI Programme – A direct impact on our children

Gillas Lane Primary Academy, located in one of England's most deprived areas, saw outstanding improvements in pupils' language abilities and confidence with the NELI programme.

Gillas Lane Primary Academy is a smaller-than-average primary school located in an area of high deprivation in Sunderland. They are within the top 5-10% of most deprived areas in England and 73% of their children are eligible for Free School Meals. Sharon Burnhope, EYFS Teaching Assistant and NELI Lead shares why NELI is an essential part of their EYFS provision.  

A structured programme with easy-to-measure impact 

Our children have more barriers to learning than most, starting points are significantly below average, high involvement of outside agencies and a lack of life experiences impact on the speech and language abilities of children in our school. Children arrive at school with enormous gaps in their communication, language and literacy development. We had been using an alternative programme to support these children, but when we reviewed the NELI Programme, the structure of NELU appealed to us, as well as the pre- and post-intervention data from the included language assessment, LanguageScreen. In our first year, we saw excellent progress for the children taking part in NELI, so it made sense for us to continue using the programme and I am pleased to say we have seen further increases in progress each year we have implemented NELI.  

Delivering an enjoyable assessment 

We assess our Reception children with LanguageScreen in December, once they’ve had a chance to settle into the routines of school life. The assessment is really easy-to-deliver and I enjoy that it is not a lot of “tick boxes”. The app tells you exactly what to expect from the children throughout. The children also also really engaged by the pictures they see. What I love is that all the data is automatically inputted and the results are generated in an easy-to-understand format. We use the reports at the end of the year to produce analysis for our senior leadership and governors to show the impact of NELI and the whole process is so simple for us to do. 

Developing confidence through consistency 

We usually have 5-6 children in our NELI intervention group. Sessions take place at the same time each day to ensure a routine for the children, and this structure along with Ted’s Listening Rules and the consistency of each group and individual session helps the children to know what to expect. They learn how to listen and how to take turns when speaking, something many of our children have never had to do at home! 

When we first start, children often won’t talk and are not confident. But when we start the individual sessions, their confidence starts to grow and they in turn engage more in the group sessions – it is so lovely to see this develop, and often very quickly at the beginning of the programme. The individual sessions are key to developing the children’s confidence so they fully participate in the programme, and while they may not always feel easy to schedule into the busy school day, we feel the children would not get as much out of the NELI programme if we missed these. NELI is well-planned and resourced. It is easy to follow but we do believe that it does need to be followed with fidelity for maximum impact.  

Another thing I love to see throughout the year is children using their imagination more along with a wider vocabulary. When we start the intervention, children really have to think hard about what is on the story cards to work out what is happening in the picture. But, as the sessions go on, they use their imagination more, and are able to share so much more information. They also take the idea of using their imagination back to their play.    

Supporting access to literacy and the wider curriculum 

We know that children’s understanding of language has a direct impact on their ability to read and understand information – if it is not addressed quickly, there could be a lifelong impact on their ability to learn. Children need to be able to communicate their needs and feelings, and although we work closely with our speech and language therapists, NELI ensures more children can access direct support so they are able to access more of the curriculum as they progress through school.  

NELI is also very complementary to other programmes we are using in school. For example, we use Read, Write, Inc to teach systematic, synthetic phonics. Because children have already been introduced to sounds and letter shapes using RWI, we use these in our NELI sessions too. This further cements children’s understanding without confusing them. It links perfectly with our SSP.  

A direct impact on our children 

At Gillas Lane, NELI has a direct impact on the speech, language and communication development of our children. They develop confidence in speaking to others due to the individual sessions that lead into small group time and is then evidence in their independent play. We would highly recommend NELI to other schools, as we have seen excellent results since we began using the programme. The data generated via the assessment, LanguageScreen, also provides an excellent way of demonstrating progress to our senior leadership and other stakeholders. We believe NELI helps us to ensure that these children are not being held back, despite the circumstances within which they enter school.  

 

 

 The children participating in NELI are represented by the orange plot, with the blue plot children who did not participate in the programme. The pre- and post- results show the growth in children’s language skills due to receiving the NELI intervention.