What do we mean by learning delay?

The term 'learning delay' can be used broadly to describe children who are falling behind in terms of intellectual, emotional and personal development. The words 'learning delay' are not used here as a clinical diagnosis or assessment of special educational needs.

The evidence of this learning delay can be identified from an early age. Feinstein (2003) used simple tasks with 22 month old babies and found that the difference between the average rank of children in the top and bottom social class groups is 13 percentiles.

More specifically within early learning studies, the term 'learning delay' has been used to describe lack of school readiness (Snow, Burns and Griffin, 1998,  Olds, 2006) – children who are less likely to start school prepared to read.

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Last updated: 3rd December 2009 at 01:12:11