Additional school places have been added for NELI 2021/22, limited places are available. Click here to register your school.
Schools are required to add trainees and provide the email addresses of all the staff they would like to participate in online NELI training before Friday 17th September 2021. This can be completed by a school’s NELI lead in their online NELI account.
NELI training course 1 called Language Fundamentals will ‘go live’ on FutureLearn in early October meaning staff nominated for training can start working through the online training materials at their own pace. Staff nominated for training will receive an email from the platform FutureLearn inviting them to enrol to have access to the training platform. Both staff delivering NELI to pupils and reception class teachers are required to complete this course.
NELI training course 2 called Delivering the Nuffield Early Language Intervention will ‘go live’ on FutureLearn in early November. Those delivering the NELI programme to pupils are required to complete this course. We suggest having the NELI kit resources available to you while completing this course to support with understanding the online material.
There is no requirement for when schools need to start the training, we just ask that staff delivering NELI to pupils complete courses 1 and 2 (8-10 hours of content) before starting the programme with the children in January. NELI leads can opt-in to take part in training and Reception classes teachers can opt to complete the whole training package if they wish.
You can find more information about the training package here.
As a school receiving NELI for the first time in 2021/22 you will receive a 2-year DfE funded subscription to www.languagescreen.com. This resource is a tablet-based language assessment tool which we recommend completing with all your Reception pupils to inform your decisions about which pupils receive the NELI programme. More information about LanguageScreen can be found here.
In late October your school’s NELI lead will receive an email containing a link to your school’s LanguageScreen account. Please don’t create a LanguageScreen account before this date on the LanguageScreen website, as the free account will only be available to you by using the link in the email.
In early October, please distribute a letter to Reception class parents with a link to both the LanguageScreen privacy notice and Nuffield Foundation privacy notice. We will email a copy of a letter template to Reception class teachers and NELI Leads in early October which schools can use.
Once NELI leads have access to their school LanguageScreen account they will be required to upload a spreadsheet listing the school’s Reception pupils. This will lead to an output of QR codes linked to each pupil which can be distributed to the staff who will complete the language assessments with the children.
Schools are encouraged to choose a suitable time between late October and December to complete the assessments. It will take around 10 minutes per pupil and there is content within Course 1 of the online training programme to support you with LanguageScreen assessments.
Schools will receive the physical resources (handbooks, flashcards and Ted the puppet) needed to deliver the NELI programme to pupils by NELI leads. NELI leads will receive an email notifying them their school’s NELI kits have been dispatched. Please make your school office staff aware of the delivery, so they can accept it on your behalf.
We recommend planning in some time to ready the materials for use with pupils e.g. cutting up some of the flashcards and putting them into small folders.
Schools can start delivering the programme to pupils as soon as staff have completed training, identified which pupils they would like to benefit from NELI using LanguageScreen and received the physical resources (NELI kit). We advise that schools start the programme in January 2022 to ensure you can complete the 20-week programme
The NELI programme involves providing 20 weeks of small group and individual sessions. There are 3 group sessions a week taking 30 minutes each, and 2 individual sessions a week per child which take around 15 minutes. If a member of staff is supporting 5 NELI pupils they usually need 4 hours a week to deliver the programme. More information on how the NELI programme is structured can be found here.
To support staff with the latter half of the programme there is a short third online training course which staff are required to complete before they reach week 11 of the programme materials. Again, staff can work through the online materials at their own pace with it usually taking around 2 hours to complete.
NELI leads will be contacted and required to complete one short survey each half term during the Spring and Summer terms to feedback on how programme delivery is progressing within their school.
Once children have received the 20 weeks of the NELI programme we suggest schools use LanguageScreen to reassess NELI children’s language. This will aid schools with reviewing children’s progress and support with planning what provision may be needed as the children move into year 1. Schools will be provided with enough assessment tokens to reassess all the children in their Reception cohort. This will help schools understand if the ‘language gap’ has begun to close for NELI pupils.
