Online training and support enables staff to access comprehensive training at a time and pace that suits them, as well receive ongoing support throughout the programme delivery. Training is provided via FutureLearn.

NELI training is made up of three courses:

• Course 1: Language Fundamentals
• Course 2: Delivering the NELI Intervention
• Course 3: Delivering Part 2 of the NELI Intervention

The practitioner delivering NELI needs to complete courses 1 and 2 before starting to deliver the NELI intervention to children. The third course needs to be completed before reaching Part 2 of the programme (week 11). Course 2 includes tips on preparing the NELI intervention resources so you may want to allow time for resource preparation before you begin with NELI.

Class teachers and NELI Leads (if not delivering sessions) should complete Course 1 but can also work through all the material if they wish.

LanguageScreen is a digital assessment to quickly assess children’s oral language skills and identify those who would benefit from the NELI intervention.

The assessment takes less than ten minutes per child and results are provided in easy-to-interpret reports. It’s best to plan when in the Autumn Term you are going to run the LanguageScreen assessments. Many schools run these at the same time as the Reception baseline assessment, or just after these have been completed and once the children have settled in.

If you want to inform parents that your school will be using the LanguageScreen assessment, we have created a template for you to use. Please click on this link to read more and download the letter template.

The NELI intervention includes a physical resource pack containing the Teacher Handbooks, activity flashcards and Ted the puppet. We recommend you plan 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 and prepared the NELI resource pack. Please ensure you have sufficient time to complete the full 20-week NELI intervention.

Each week small group and individual sessions provide support with children’s vocabulary and narrative skills by focusing on key Special Words. If a member of staff is supporting 5 NELI pupils they usually need 4 hours a week to deliver the programme.

Once children have received the 20 weeks of the NELI programme schools should reasses with LanguageScreen. 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. It will also help schools understand if the ‘language gap’ has begun to close for NELI pupils. If a school is not able to reassess all children in Reception, we recommend they reassess all children who received NELI and the next 6-8 children above them in the initial LanguageScreen report.