Using formal speech with authority figures, making eye contact in conversation and avoiding conflict with a well-chosen word. These are the hidden rules of middle-class behaviour that so many take for granted and that give so many children a head start in life. Usually they are absorbed, not taught.

Now the education authority at Reading, Berkshire, is teaching speech skills to disadvantaged children using a programme devised by a US educationalist, Ruby Payne.

Ann Tanner, head teacher of Whitley Park Infant and Nursery School, said: “Many children come to us with very poor language skills. We had to find sensitive ways to correct them.” Her teachers use a technique called “one plus one” to teach children to give answers of more than one word. “If they say ‘bus’ we add another word and may say, ‘It’s a big bus’ or ‘It’s a red bus’. You can build up with more words.

“If a child hits or pushes another child it is usually because they don’t have the language of conflict resolution. So we teach them to say, ‘I don’t like what you are doing, please stop it’.”

Children are also encouraged to replace “woz ya” with “were you” and “off of” with “off” or “from”.

The school also holds ceremonies twice a year in which each child is presented with a book and shakes hand with a member of the local Rotary Club.

“If a similar situation ever happens again and someone holds out their hand, they will know to shake it,” she said.

Anna Wright, Director of Children’s Services at Reading, introduced the programme to help to raise achievment of primary aged children living in pockets of ingrained poverty.

“Reading looks like one of the most prosperous cities in the UK, but it serves three wards that are among the lowest five per cent in the country.

“It is not just straightforward financial poverty, it’s intergenerational poverty. A child may have parents, grandparents and great grandparents who have been workless. That creates a particular culture,” she said.

“The children often have poor language skills, and there is often a loss of belief that they can achive and do something different.

John Stannard, a government adviser who evaluated the pilot scheme with Sutton Trust funding, said the programme risked oversimplifying causes of low achievement, but it highlighted important issues.

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