Four Assessments Points

There will be a total of four assessment points in the study. Direct measures of verbal and non-verbal abilities will be gathered at times B, D, F and H.  Educational outcomes from SATS for English at end of year 6 will be used to initially recruit the cohort.

In addition SATS in English, Maths and Science will be used at the end of years 6 and 9 to explore changes in performance using educational outcome measures (times A and H). This measure will provide information on the impact of the intervention on educational outcomes.

Assessments will be administered to all participants at time B who meet the subject selection criteria after the SATS screening. At this point further diagnostic assessment for language impairment will be undertaken. The assessment phase will be repeated again after 6 months at time C. This provides a double baseline measure before therapy is introduced.

The third assessment point at time F will take place immediately after therapy for groups A-C and after a 10-week pause for group D, the deferred treatment group. The final assessment will measure the maintenance of therapy effects for groups A-C. For group D it will measure post therapy changes. Assessors will be blind to group membership.

Standardised and non-standardised language measures targeting specific aspects of narrative and vocabulary will be assessed as well as control measures where change is not predicted. Service users (students, teachers, TAs) will be asked for their views on the therapy and its impact on classroom performance through questionnaires.

The TAs and teachers’ knowledge of language impairment and strategies to improve language will be explored through questionnaires.

Outcome measures will be student based (standardised assessments, student questionnaires and teacher/ TA and parent questionnaires), teacher/TA/therapist based (questionnaires exploring the understanding and awareness of language and communication, language impairment, impact of the language impairment on education, storytelling and vocabulary training) and school based (use of SATS results to assess impact of intervention on educational outcomes, staff questionnaire exploring how training has impacted on daily practice of staff and recommendations for future practice).