My three-year-old can't sing nursery rhymes. It's not that Elsie can't hold a tune (unlike her father). It's the words that get her in a muddle. There are other things, too: we were convinced that she was colour-blind for a while because the names of colours bamboozled her; everyday words seem to slip from her grasp, leaving her stammering (or screaming) with frustration. Her inability to communicate effectively with her peers is leaving her increasingly isolated at nursery - and there's just a year to go before she starts school.

But she is not alone. According to the charity “I can”, which is running a campaign called Make Chatter Matter to highlight the importance of children's communication development, between 40 and 50 per cent of UK children arrive at primary school without the speech and language skills they need to learn and make friends (in some areas of the country it is as high as 84 per cent).

Moreover, about 7 per cent of children who otherwise appear to be developing normally struggle with a specific language impairment. This means that in the UK more than 211,000 children aged 3 to 6 have an impairment in language acquisition, mostly undiagnosed.

Last week a government report into services for children with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) - the “Bercow Review” - was published. It recognises the value of early intervention and recommends a “robust system” to spot such children early. “If a child does not benefit from early intervention,” it adds, “there are multiple risks: of lower educational attainment, of behavioural problems, of emotional and psychological difficulties, of poorer employment prospects and, in some cases, of a descent into criminality” (studies suggest that half the prisoners in UK jails have language difficulties.) It also raises the idea of a screening programme such as the one about to be launched in Denmark.

Until now, though, there has been no simple, effective screening test for three to six-year-olds - which is where the new grammar and phonology screening test (GAPS) comes in. It takes ten minutes and can be administered by teachers, nursery staff or parents, according to Professor Heather van der Lely, who has spent 20 years developing the test at University College London. “It provides a means of assessing children's language skills that aims to pick up children in need of further diagnostic assessment,” she says.

The British Dyslexia Association has expressed its concern at claims that GAPS can be used to “diagnose” dyslexia, but in trials involving nearly 1,000 children across the UK, the results it produced tallied closely with those of other large-scale studies based on a range of language tests.

So is the test as easy as it sounds? I decided to use Elsie to find out. She is not the most co-operative of guinea-pigs (being more interested in dismantling the cardboard cutout of “Bik the alien” than repeating sentences) but after an unpromising start, the test really did take only ten minutes to complete and the scoring system - using ticks or crosses - was so straightforward that even a harassed mother such as myself could manage it.

The results left me confused and rather disappointed, though. Did I want her to “pass” (to relieve my anxiety) or “fail” (to move us closer to a diagnosis)? Either way I was frustrated. Elsie came in the bottom 30 per cent for her age bracket - just outside the margins of “failure” but sufficiently low to confirm my anxiety about her progress. It felt as if we had got no farther - except that the results, combined with concerns expressed by Elsie's nursery teachers, have led to her being referred to a speech therapist and a paediatrician. We have no definitive diagnosis and may not get one for many years, but at least she is “in the system” and being monitored.

This week the Government pledged £12million to implement the recommendations of the Bercow Review, and a further £40million to support speaking and listening in the early years.

But there is clearly a need for a better system of identifying SLCN children as early as possible. A test such as GAPS that is affordable and can be done by non-professionals could make a big difference.

The Conservative MP John Bercow, who champions the report's findings, says: “With strong communication skills children can engage and thrive. Without them they will struggle to learn, achieve, make friends and interact with the world around them.”

GAPS can be bought online at www.dldcn.com. The professional version is £65 (with 25 forms); the parental version £55 (with five forms).

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