Teacher judgements of the language skills of children in the early years of schooling

Language impairments are often associated with problems in educational attainments and in acquiring literacy, but speech therapy services to school-aged children are not universally available. If teachers are able to reliably identify those children whose language skills place them at risk, then the specialist services offered by speech and language therapists (pathologists) may be used in more productive ways. The current study compared teacher judgements with formal testing of general language ability and phonological awareness. Results indicate that teacher identification compared more favourably with formal test outcomes for pre-primary and Year 1 children than was the case when their judgements of kindergarten children were included.