Since Sir Kier Starmer mentioned “oracy” as an educational priority for a new Labour government in July 2023, it has grown in the education world’s consciousness to the point where lots of schools are now scrambling to incorporate it in anticipation of the changes.
“It’s not just a skill for learning, it’s also a skill for life. Not just for the workplace, also for working out who you are – for overcoming shyness or disaffection, anxiety or doubt – or even just for opening up more to our friends and family,” Starmer said.
There is lots to unpack in this statement and only time will tell what the Labour Party have in mind. But at The Literacy Engine we firmly believe that knowledge is the bedrock of all literacy including oracy. So that’s where we started when we built our Oracy Engine.
Without knowledge, students struggle to communicate and struggle to comprehend all forms of communication. Discussion, for example, requires both active listening and verbal responses. Without a grounding of knowledge in the subject being discussed, students will struggle to participate. For oracy to truly fulfil its potential as a transformative tool in education, it must be firmly grounded in knowledge and curriculum content.
We can use the example of a student participating in a debate on climate change. To effectively contribute to the discussion, the student must possess at least some understanding of the scientific principles underlying climate change, the environmental factors involved, and the potential consequences. Without this foundational knowledge, their contributions to the debate may lack depth, coherence, and credibility. It is difficult to create an argument without any building blocks to put together.
Integrating Oracy Across The Curriculum
Oracy is not a standalone skill but rather an integral part of the broader educational journey. It cannot and should not be detached from that broader journey any more than writing should be. By aligning oracy with curriculum content and teaching and learning strategies, teachers can ensure that students engage meaningfully with the subject matter, deepen their understanding, AND develop essential communication skills simultaneously.
Incorporating oracy into the curriculum reinforces the importance of active learning. Through well structured and deliberate talk based strategies teachers can efficiently and effectively check for understanding across an entire group. However, for these activities to be truly enriching, they must be grounded in substantive content that challenges and stimulates intellectual inquiry.
Oracy serves as a vehicle for knowledge construction and refinement. When students articulate their ideas aloud, they are not merely regurgitating information but actively processing and synthesising it. Through dialogue and debate, they confront alternative perspectives, evaluate evidence, and refine their arguments. In this way, oracy becomes a dynamic tool for intellectual growth and critical thinking, fostering a deeper engagement with the curriculum content.
Oracy for Learning and Life
It is also worth noting that oracy is not confined to the realm of academic subjects but extends to various aspects of personal and social development. Effective communication skills are essential for navigating everyday interactions, forging meaningful relationships, and succeeding in the professional world. By integrating oracy with curriculum content, educators can equip students with the communication skills they need to thrive in all aspects of life. With a broad general knowledge, young people are better equipped to participate in a broad range of discussions and can better assimilate new knowledge gained verbally as they have pre existing schemas to attach it to.
The Oracy Engine
At The Literacy Engine we built our Oracy Engine to specifically harness the power of talk to enhance and enrich learning. We identified 6 bespoke strands that young people need to develop to become effective oral communicators: Knowledge, Physical, Linguistic, Structural, Cognitive and Social/Emotional aspects of oracy. We then carefully selected evidence based classroom strategies that could be used in a range of different subjects when teaching different topics. These strategies will be familiar to most evidence-informed classrooms and do not require learning any artificially created “roles” for the development of oracy. They are a collection of the most effective teaching and learning strategies that happen to use talk but we’ve done the hard work for you of mapping them against our oracy framework to make explicit the strands being developed.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line is that the current curriculum content load being delivered in schools is massive. There is no space for additional “oracy lessons” without cutting something out. If that were the case, what would you cut? Oracy undoubtedly plays a pivotal role in education, enabling students to communicate effectively, think critically, and engage meaningfully with the world around them. However, for oracy to be truly transformative, it must be firmly rooted in knowledge and curriculum content. By aligning oracy with substantive subject matter, educators can ensure that students not only develop essential communication skills but also deepen their understanding of key concepts and domains of knowledge. In this way, oracy becomes not just a tool for expression but a catalyst for intellectual growth and lifelong learning.