The Education & Manpower Bureau will provide primary schools with extra grants to enhance school-based speech-therapy services starting from the 2006-07 school year.

It will phase in the Enhanced Speech Therapy Scheme for government and aided primary schools and a grant will be provided for schools to employ speech therapists or buy school-based speech therapy services.

These services include:

* assessments for pupils;

* intensive individual, group or classroom-based speech therapy services;

* training for parents;

* courses for teachers on ways to identify pupils with speech and language impairments, workshops and seminars; and

* collaboration with teachers in developing remedial resources and enrichment programmes that enhance pupils' language skills.

Local assessment tool

Meanwhile, the bureau has launched the first-ever local assessment tool to assist teachers and speech therapists in identifying and diagnosing pupils' speech and language problems.

The Cantonese Expressive Language Scales are designed for Primary One to Primary Six pupils. They help teachers and experts set accurate therapy goals for pupils with communication, language or speech impairments and formulate appropriate strategies to enhance their communication skills and learning effectiveness.

The scales consists of two parts, "Sentence Structures" and "Narration Skills". Through assessments of pupils' abilities in forming utterances and narrating events, their overall oral expressive language skills can be better understood.

The assessment tool consists of a full version for speech therapists and a simplified version for teachers.

Tailor-made programme

Pupils diagnosed with speech and language impairments are provided with follow-up services. The bureau's Speech Therapy Services Section will team up with schools and teachers to develop tailor-made school-based programmes.