§ Mr. BercowTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if she will make a statement on the public service agreement targets for children to have normal spelling and language development at(a) 18 months and (b) three years. [14066]
§ Yvette CooperThe only public service agreement target of this nature is that for Sure Start concerning children in Sure Start areas having normal speech and language skills at 18 months and three years. This is related to the previous PSA period 1998–99 to 2001–02, and has now been superseded with a similar target that can be better measured at a local level. The current Sure Start PSA target is
To achieve by 2004 for children aged 0-three in the 500 Sure Start areas, a reduction of five percentage points in the number of children with speech and language problems requiring specialist intervention by the age of four.Improved speech and language development is a proxy measure for improving children's ability to learn as there is a strong positive relationship between normal speech and language development and readiness to learn. All Sure Start programmes work towards improving the speech and language skills of children under four. Systems are in place to monitor change in speech and language skills of young children in Sure Start areas and the first information on this will be available later next year.