THURROCK has shown a significant rise in the number of young children requiring help with speech, language and communication as they start their school lives.

Schools across the borough are struggling to cope with the problem – and solutions are going to be harder to find as the cost of living crisis continues to eat away into school budgets.

Their already-strained budgets are being squeezed even tighter to accommodate rising energy and equipment costs, as well as salaries for teachers and support staff.

Primary schools are particularly badly hit and today (Tuesday, 8 November) the National Association of Head Teachers said they will have to make teaching assistants redundant or reduce their hours, while half are looking at cutting the number of teachers or teaching hours.

So with the amount of teaching time likely to decline it seems that a solution to the problem that has seen a rise in Thurrock of children needing speech and language help go from 116 a year in 2015/16 to 162 in 2021/22 is going to be hard to find.

The rise equates to 43.36 per cent, one of the highest in the country. The national average rise is 9.81.

Thurrock has far and away the worst level of increase in 11 regional authorities

Thurrock tops the list when it comes to a rise in children requiring help.

The information was compiled by the BBC's shared data unit which looked at the rising number of children needing speech and language support in the first year of school.

Across the country the survey found the number of children in England needing speech and language support in the first year of school has risen 10% in the past year – three times that of recent rises.

And the shocking news is that Thurrock is more than four times above that.

Experts believe this is happening as a direct result of the pandemic lockdowns – which meant children were deprived of contact with each other and missed interaction key to their language development.