Despite the fact that children with communication disorders is one of the most prevalent groups in New South Wales schools they receive extremely limited support, according to a Charles Sturt University (CSU) education researcher.

 

Dr. Sharynne McLeod, Associate Professor in speech and language acquisition in the School of Teacher Education at CSU, said the major study of 14 500 NSW school children showed that communication disorders is the second most common impairment to learning.

 

“Some of these children require years of treatment. Depending on the state, speech therapy is often restricted to just six or ten sessions for pre-school children because of long waiting lists and a lack of speech therapists. And most NSW schools do not have speech pathology services.”

 

Professors’ McLeod and David McKinnon’s paper The prevalence of communication disorders compared with other learning needs in 14,500 primary and secondary school students was recently published in the prestigious International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders.

 

The study found the most common learning need for young students was a specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia. The next most prevalent (13 per cent) were communication disorders (for example, stuttering, difficulties speaking intelligibly, or understanding spoken language), followed by English as a second language, behavioural or emotional difficulties, and addressing the needs of advanced learners. Hearing and visual impairments combined came in at just over one per cent.

 

“From this list, we can see that the areas that often get funding and media attention are a small percentage compared with more common communication problems,” noted Professor McLeod. Teachers also indicated how difficult it was to have children with communication disorders in their classrooms. Students with communication problems are often labelled as having behaviour problems because they are not understanding what they are being told.”

 

Professor McLeod’s current study, an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant which runs from 2007 – 2009, will continue to follow the progress of the four to five year olds to determine what services the children receive and what impact having communication impairment has on their lives.

 

“A speech impairment can negatively influence a child’s life. It can affect their ability to read and spell, and that can impact on their academic skills, their socialisation – in fact there is evidence it impinges on their whole family. For example, research shows that siblings are being pulled out of their classroom to interpret for the child with the communication disorder.

 

“Other literature shows that as adults, even when the speech or language impairment was remediated over time, they had lower socio-economic status, had fewer years of education, had lower paid and status jobs and were less likely to want to socialise.