There is a danger that, in our enthusiasm to give oracy the attention it deserves, we turn it into another thing for schools to do.
Another framework. Another set of progression statements. Another policy to write. Another initiative to implement.
And perhaps, eventually, another thing to monitor.
None of this is necessarily wrong. Schools need to be intentional about what they teach. Children deserve access to the knowledge and skills that enable them to communicate effectively. We cannot simply assume that these things will develop by themselves.
But there is an important distinction between taking oracy seriously and turning it into a discrete programme of activity.
Because oracy is not simply something that happens during a particular lesson, or when children are asked to turn to their talk partners.
It is part of how learning happens.
And if we really believe that, it ought to change the way we think about schools.
The problem with making oracy an initiative
Schools are remarkably good at implementing things.
Give us a priority and we will develop an action plan. We will identify training, allocate resources, establish expectations and find ways of evaluating impact.
There are good reasons for this. Schools are complex organisations, and improvement rarely happens through good intentions alone.
But there is a risk that this approach encourages us to think about oracy as something we can introduce, embed and eventually tick off.
We might see more sentence stems displayed in classrooms. More opportunities for paired discussion. More structured debates and presentations.
These things can be useful. Very useful, in fact.
But their presence tells us surprisingly little about the quality of talk taking place.
A classroom can be full of discussion without much thinking happening.
Equally, a classroom can be relatively quiet while children are engaged in profound intellectual work.
The question is not simply whether children are talking.
It is whether talk is helping them to think, understand, question and make meaning.
That is a rather different starting point.
Talk is not the same as learning
We have become increasingly interested in what learning looks like.
And talk is wonderfully visible.
We can hear children explaining their ideas. We can observe them taking turns. We can notice when they use particular vocabulary or build on someone else’s contribution.
This makes talk attractive as an indicator of engagement.
But we should be careful.
A child who confidently explains an idea may have understood it deeply. They may also have learned how to reproduce an explanation without fully understanding what it means.
Another child might struggle to articulate a thought precisely because they are wrestling with something difficult.
The first child looks successful. The second looks uncertain.
Yet the second may be doing the more demanding intellectual work.
This matters because, if we are not careful, our approach to oracy can begin to reward the performance of understanding rather than understanding itself.
We teach children how to sound thoughtful.
But do we always give them sufficient opportunities to become thoughtful?
The culture of the classroom
Perhaps the most important questions about oracy are not questions about resources or frameworks.
They are questions about relationships.
What happens when a child offers an answer that is wrong?
What happens when someone disagrees?
What happens when a pupil needs more time to formulate an idea?
What happens when a child asks a question that takes the lesson somewhere unexpected?
These moments tell us something important about the place of talk in a classroom.
If children learn that the purpose of speaking is to provide the answer the teacher is looking for, they become very good at doing precisely that.
But if they learn that their ideas are worth exploring, that uncertainty is acceptable and that disagreement can be productive, something rather more interesting begins to happen.
Talk becomes a means of intellectual exploration.
This does not mean abandoning structure. Nor does it mean that every contribution is equally accurate or useful.
Teachers have an essential role in developing knowledge, correcting misconceptions and moving thinking forward.
But the way they respond to children’s contributions matters enormously.
A thoughtful question can open up an idea.
A hurried evaluation can close it down.
Sometimes, the most powerful thing a teacher can do is resist the temptation to speak.
Oracy belongs to everyone
If oracy is genuinely central to the work of a school, it cannot belong exclusively to English lessons, assemblies or a designated member of staff.
It belongs in mathematics, where children explain why a method works.
It belongs in science, where pupils test explanations against evidence.
It belongs in history, where they consider competing interpretations.
It belongs in the playground, where children negotiate, resolve disagreements and learn to understand perspectives different from their own.
And it belongs in the relationships between adults and children.
Indeed, we might reasonably ask whether a school can claim to value pupil voice if children have relatively little influence over the things that shape their daily experiences.
Do we listen to children only when we have invited them to speak?
Or do we create a culture in which their contributions are genuinely taken seriously?
There is a difference.
And children notice it.
We need to think carefully about what we value
There is another tension worth considering.
Much of the conversation about oracy understandably focuses on helping children become confident speakers.
Confidence matters. The ability to communicate clearly can open doors that might otherwise remain closed.
But confidence is not the same as competence.
Nor is speaking frequently necessarily evidence of communicating well.
Some children are naturally expressive. Others are more reserved. Some need additional processing time. Others communicate most effectively when they have had an opportunity to rehearse their thoughts.
A thoughtful approach to oracy should recognise these differences without lowering expectations.
We want children to develop the capacity to express themselves, listen carefully, consider alternative perspectives and adapt their communication to different circumstances.
But we should be wary of promoting a narrow model of what a successful communicator looks and sounds like.
The aim is not to produce classrooms full of children who all speak in the same way.
It is to ensure that every child has the tools, knowledge and opportunities to make their voice count.
Perhaps we need fewer initiatives and better questions
None of this is an argument against explicitly teaching oracy. Quite the opposite.
Children benefit from being taught how to explain, question, reason, listen and communicate with increasing sophistication. These things should not be left to chance, particularly when opportunities to develop them are distributed unequally.
But explicit teaching is only part of the picture.
The wider culture of a school must provide opportunities for children to use and deepen these capabilities in meaningful ways.
This means thinking about curriculum design, classroom routines, teacher questioning, relationships and the everyday interactions that make up school life.
It means asking whether children are genuinely expected to think, or simply to respond.
Whether we create space for uncertainty, or rush towards the correct answer.
Whether listening is valued as highly as speaking.
And whether the voices we hear most often are necessarily the voices we understand best.
These questions are not always easy to answer.
But they are considerably more interesting than asking whether every classroom has a talk protocol displayed on the wall.
A different starting point
Oracy deserves its growing prominence in education.
For too long, the development of spoken language has been left to chance, despite its significance for learning, relationships and participation in society.
We should welcome the fact that schools are thinking more carefully about it.
But we should also resist the temptation to make oracy smaller than it really is.
It is not simply a collection of techniques to be taught, practised and assessed.
It is one of the ways children encounter knowledge, construct understanding and learn to participate in the world around them.
And that means its significance extends far beyond the quality of a classroom discussion.
Perhaps the most useful question for school leaders is not, What are we doing about oracy?
Perhaps it is, What would our school look and feel like if we genuinely believed that every child’s thinking and voice mattered?
The answers might lead us somewhere rather more interesting than another initiative.
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