School teachers and their pupils have fixed speech stereotypes, and both sets of stereotypes are potentially the source of serious problems. However, there are many sorts of teachers and pupils who are not influenced by speech. There is some evidence that teachers base their first impression of pupils on speech forms in preference to other sources of information that might appear to be more relevant. However, this is only true for student teachers rather than experienced ones who may evaluate pupils in quite a different way.

This was further established by carrying out an experiment that gave the results that among a photograph, speech record, and an essay or drawing, student teachers gave favorable impressions based on the speech sample of pupils rather than the other sources provided

However, a problem arises when assuming that teachers do form first impressions of pupils on the basis of their speech. This is a problem for a child whose speech leads to an unfavorable first impression. This will make an impact on the child’s performance in class as it may reinforce any negative prejudices which the pupil may have against their own speech and may result in negative performance.