School-based SLPs work alongside teachers, school staff and families to help students communicate, participate and learn. Rather than support only happening in an individual session, SLPs look at the communication demands students experience throughout their school day and help to reduce barriers where learning and participation happen, in the classroom, on the playground and across the wider school environment.

Here are some of the ways an SLP might support your child's school experience:

Making classrooms more communication-friendly

SLPs collaborate with teachers to identify ways of making classroom communication and learning more accessible. This might include supporting how instructions are given, using visuals, explicitly teaching vocabulary or considering how students are supported to understand and participate in classroom discussions.

Importantly, these strategies can benefit many students, not just those with an identified communication need.

Supporting language and literacy

Language is an important part of almost everything students do at school. Students use language to understand instructions, learn new vocabulary, answer questions, explain their thinking, comprehend what they read and organise their ideas for writing.

SLPs bring specialist knowledge of speech, language and communication to work collaboratively with educators to support these foundations for learning.

Supporting connection and participation

Communication plays an important role in friendships, group work, play and a student's sense of belonging at school. SLPs can help identify barriers to social communication and work with students and the people around them to create environments and strategies that support successful interaction, connection and participation.

Supporting speech

Some children experience difficulty producing particular speech sounds or being understood by others. SLPs can identify and support speech needs and collaborate with families and educators to help students communicate successfully across their everyday environments.

Supporting different ways of communicating

Not everyone communicates using speech alone.Augmentative and Alternative Communication, commonly known as AAC, includes different ways a person can communicate in addition to, or instead of, speech. This might include gestures, signs, pictures, communication boards or electronic communication devices.

SLPs can support schools to ensure students who use AAC have access to their communication system and opportunities to use it throughout their school day.

Does support always mean one-on-one therapy?

No and this is an important difference between speech-language pathology in education and what families may have experienced in other settings.

Sometimes individual or small-group support may be appropriate. At other times, an SLP may observe in the classroom, collaborate with a teacher, model a strategy, help adjust an activity or support approaches across an entire class or school.

The question is not simply “How much time does my child spend with the SLP?”

A more helpful question can be:

“What communication barriers are affecting my child's learning and participation, and how can we work together to reduce them?”

When the adults around a child understand their communication needs and know how to support them, those strategies can be used throughout the week — not only when the SLP is present.

Communication creates possibility

This year's Speech Pathology Week theme, Communication creates possibility, captures why this work matters. Communication gives students opportunities to ask questions, share ideas, build relationships, make choices, participate in learning and have their voice heard. School-based SLPs work alongside educators and families to help create those possibilities, supporting students not only to communicate, but to access, participate and thrive in their education.