The Importance of Oracy
The relatively simple act of communicating – to pass information on to others and to understand what others say to us – is one of life’s most important skills. However, the term ‘oracy’, which is now used in educational circles to describe both the communication skills involved and how they facilitate high-quality learning, was only coined in the 1960s in an effort to highlight the importance of teaching spoken language alongside reading and writing.
The teaching of oracy in schools has seen several peaks and troughs since then in terms of profile. For example, the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1987 saw oracy gain equal footing with reading and writing in importance, with its own programme of study. Since this high point, however, talk in classrooms has been steadily receding. This is, in part, due to the ‘accountability and league table’ culture that has pervaded our education system. It led to the reduction of oracy to merely an advisory list of ‘would be nice’ features in the 2015 update.
I became a teacher during the COVID pandemic and so started my career with very little formal guidance in terms of how to develop talk in the classroom. I cringe when thinking about my meagre efforts back then in helping children to speak with confidence and poise. COVID also eradicated any opportunities we had to speak in public. Assemblies and whole-school performances – even events across classes – were curtailed. I’m sure many of you can relate.
Fast forward to 2023. Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, unveiled his party’s plans to ‘weave oracy through a new national curriculum that finally closes the gap between learning and life, academic and practical, vocational skills, school and work’. Although we are still waiting for this promise to come to fruition (we will hopefully find out more when the latest National Curriculum is published in Spring 2027), the Teaching & Learning community and the press has since written countless blogs and recorded myriad podcasts on the topic of ‘getting ahead of the oracy curve’. You may remember from my previous blog that my first priority when appointed as Literacy Lead at a primary school in South Oxfordshire in the 2024-25 academic year was reading. We worked on developing the quality of its teaching and how to increase its profile as a hobby. Although this is a project that will continue over many years (truly, could one ever consider it to be complete?), I felt that the next year’s priority had to be oracy.
The first step, which happened within the first two weeks of September 2025, was to assemble a working group. This consisted of a member of SLT, KS1 and KS2 teachers and a number of TAs across the school. I felt that this approach gave us oversight across all areas of the school, along with a management and operational viewpoint. We met several times over Term 1 this year to determine the scope of the project, develop a vision statement for the project and work on constructing an outline of its different phases.
The first thing we all agreed on is that this would be a multi-year project, broken up into several parts. We wanted to build on and improve what we already do in the classroom but also increase opportunities for children to speak and perform in public.
We also decided that the project needed a brand; something that the children could recognise across the school that represents the importance of speaking and listening. We decided on Speak Up! as a name, and from there I designed a logo and put together a series of posters and presentations that feature sentence stems for different subjects and situations (e.g. How To Speak Like A Scientist, or How To Express An Opinion). It’s been gratifying to see the posters become part of classroom displays and presentations being used in lessons to help develop high quality talk.
After delivering an INSET (In-Service Education and Training) to staff about the project and its importance, we started working on phase one – building a culture and making oracy more ‘visible’ in the school. The logo and associated resources helped us with this, and we ran a whole school competition to design a brand mascot (which received over 150 entries). As well as this, we arranged a Performance Evening for children across the school to recite poetry, sing and play musical instruments. It was incredibly well received and attended, and plans are already in place to include more events like this in the calendar next year. It has been wonderful to speak to teachers who, as a result of the event, have given more thought about running an oracy-based club or their own or organising an event.
We have also started working on developing oracy skills in the classroom. Our initial focus is Teaching & Learning based – improving the quality of questioning in the school, specifically in science lessons – but our broader plan is to create and maintain a school oracy curriculum that is weaved into the curriculum of other subjects. Our aim is that it will complement and strengthen children’s learning through a range of different types of talk. They will be more able to share, develop and consolidate their understanding orally.
I hope to give you an update in the near future!
- Robin Burrows
