Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her department is taking to increase the level of awareness of developmental language disorder with schools, teachers and other education professionals.

The department is raising staff awareness of a variety of speech and language needs through the development of National Inclusion Standards and the delivery of a new £200 million special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) continual professional development (CPD) programme and Experts at Hand. We are ensuring all children with speech and language needs are supported, including those with developmental language disorder, by ensuring staff are equipped with the right knowledge and tools.

The National Inclusion Standards will include whole-school, universal approaches to support inclusion, as well as tools and approaches to identify and respond to needs through the targeted/targeted plus layers of support. ​The first tranche of our CPD offer, published on 25 September 2026, includes a focus on speech, language and communication development, and we are continuing to work with stakeholders to develop further materials.

To provide further support, this development offer will come together with an investment in better access to speech and language therapists (SaLTs). As part of our £1.8 billion investment over three years, schools will be able to access support from professionals, including SaLTs through the Experts at Hand offer. We are also investing £15 million to establish new SaLT advanced practitioners in every integrated care board area to support more SaLTs to work with educational settings to help break down communication barriers and deliver more speech and language support for children and young people.