Oracy: the superpower for our troubled times

In our divided, technology-driven world, honed speaking and listening skills will bring people together and help solve complex problems. It should be taught to every child.

“That boy, you’ve just heard speak in front of this huge audience, has got a significant speech impediment. When he started school in Reception, he had about five words. Look at him now. Look at the confidence.”

The pride on the face of Sarah Hanson, a Worcester primary school headteacher, was infectious.

“It’s really important that every child is able to speak to people and listen to people. Look at what’s going on in the world. A little bit more listening and empathy and understanding will go a long way. Oracy has been big for our school. Every child knows their voice and opinion matters. It’s not about the person who shouts the loudest who gets their way.”

I’m in Birmingham for the annual showcase of all things speaking and listening in schools. This is the Great Oracy Exhibition. Hundreds of teachers and school leaders from across the country meeting in packed conference rooms to share and debate extraordinary, cutting-edge practice.

Until a few years ago, there had been bits and pieces of speaking in schools - but usually confined to the odd English lesson, a lunchtime debate club or the occasional public speaking competition. Reading and writing - lots of it. Speaking - perhaps the life skill - far too little. And as the fashion for silent corridors, rigid behaviour codes and drilling for exams took hold, space for classroom talk has diminished.

When we opened School 21, a 4 to 18 school in East London, more than a decade ago, the three founders (Oli de Botton, Ed Fidoe and myself), all with connections to speaking (through politics, theatre, speechwriting), wanted to change that.

I had also been inspired by an assembly I had seen at school in Harlem in which the students were in the round and came forward to talk, to act out parts, to tell stories, and discuss important issues.

I liked the word oracy - coined in 1965 by the British educator Andrew Wilkinson - though many hated it.

“No one will know what it means.”

“Why don’t we just use speaking or talking instead?”

I wasn’t happy with either of those words. Both sounded routine, too trivial. Everyone can talk so what is there to learn?

Oracy instead is a word that perhaps tries too hard to join the family of literacy and numeracy, but feels more substantial and more academic. And I was a great believer from my time in politics, that unusual words are often more sticky. So oracy it was. We were going to create a subject called oracy. And the more we delved into it, the more layers emerged. This was not just about public speaking - as most assumed - but the huge variety of talk that we use each day. Pause for a moment and think about all the different conversations you have had in the last 24 hours - and the different types of oracy you used for each.

For me it would include: talking to my daughter about her upcoming job interview, discussing a piece of writing with a colleague, persuading Virgin Media to finally come and fix the WiFi (that requires a range of oracy skills I didn’t even know I had!), pitching a proposal to a funder, and discussing with a complete stranger at the football why Arsenal failed to create any chances in the first half.

For a child, oracy deepens thinking and enhances wellbeing. Talking through mental health problems. Resolving playground disputes with words not fists. Deepening academic understanding in lessons. Succeeding in a university interview. Showing around a visitor. Asking the teacher for a homework extension. Persuading your mum to let you stay out late.’

There is a formative period of time, with no exact boundaries, when the maturing child is beginning to try out their voice, to wear it as a superhero’s cape. It is at that time when the teacher (or parent), like the expert librarian suggesting a book for a newly voracious reader, needs to offer that child a menu of speaking opportunities to extend and challenge.

Talk starts from within; the narrative in our head. This chatter is never-ending; the soundtrack of our life. It is this secret, silent, lifelong dialogue that is the starting point for oracy. What we say and how we say it comes from deep within us.

When we speak, we turn the private into something public. But for many of us, the act of doing so is muddled, half-formed, mono-syllabic, awkward. Weighed down, perhaps, by culture, class, gender, possibly even expectation, our mouths only half open; lacking emotional range, a sense of cadence and rhythm, we cannot produce the words or the underlying tone of voice that convey our true meaning.

For too many, finding their voice is a quest with many obstacles in the way. Like the heroes of Greek mythology, it takes the slaying of too many dragons, the endless hacking back of psychological undergrowth, before it is possible to find a sense of true identity.

We see these barriers to talk in our schools every day : The disaffected child: “No-one listens,”. The shy child: “I don’t want to make a fool of myself.” The demoralised child: “I don’t know what to talk about.” The confused child: “I don’t know how to make sense of this.”

These are our children in our classrooms.

As headteacher, I saw it as our mission to ensure that every child who left our care had started to find their voice. To understand in its fullest sense that their voice can be used to convey the full intellectual and emotional breadth of their humanity. “This is me. This is what I want to say.”

So, oracy is in essence about this lifelong struggle to find meaning. It is about learning how to speak and learning what to speak about.

A framework for oracy

Working with Neil Mercer and his team at Cambridge University, we developed four strands of oracy: cognitive (how you make an argument), linguistic (how you use a full repertoire of language and idiom), Social/emotional (how you listen properly and make a connection) and physical (how you use your body, expression and voice to maximum effect).

Let’s dwell on listening for a moment. Are you a hose or a sponge? How many really good listeners do you know? How many people really listen with eye contact and complete attention, when their mobile phone is on hand for surreptitious glances every few minutes, even seconds? Deep listening is as important as skilful speaking.

We set about weaving oracy into every aspect of school life – in assemblies, in tutor time, in subject lessons. Teaching these four strands is a craft. It requires teachers to set up their classrooms for talk with the same level of planning and thought as they would for teaching literacy or numeracy. Each child given sentence stems, challenging questions to deepen thinking, different roles, discussion guidelines, ways of engaging, and a variety of settings for talk. All with the intention of building up the skill, agility and confidence of each child.

A classroom poster that would be equally useful in the House of Commons

One of my bold aims was that if a visitor had a five minute conversation with any of our children, it would be the most interesting, thought-provoking chat they would have that day.

Then, we created a charity, Voice 21. Under the visionary leadership of Beccy Earnshaw - and the expertise of Amy Gaunt and Alice Stott - oracy was transformed from the good practice of one school to a movement of inspiring teachers and schools across the country. Today, the new CEO Kate Paradine, and a brilliant team, are taking on that work with huge skill - training teachers in oracy techniques in more than 1000 schools, with the aim that every child receives a high-quality oracy education.

Just as you would expect every child to leave primary school reading and writing fluently, so we should expect them to be fluent speakers.

The overall aim? To develop agile minds; young people who can apply the knowledge they have learnt to become creative problem solvers and so avoid the danger, prevalent in our political discourse, and warned of by Psychologist Susan David, that, “Rigidity in the face of complexity is toxic.”

Today’s oracy imperative

Oracy has always been important. Today it is more so. It is at least part of the answer to so many of the problems we face.

Social media addiction is now a serious concern. Growing polarisation is hardening divides that seem increasingly difficult to bridge. AI short circuits the thinking process, with an extraordinary answer to a bewildering array of tasks and questions at your finger tips in a matter of seconds. The hollowing out of social spaces is making it harder than ever for young people to interact in person.

And we know that populism is driven by too many people and communities feeling they have no voice and are not listened to.

Our humanity, tested to destruction by the pace of change, will be deepened by our ability to share, understand, navigate difference, solve the most difficult problems, and imagine a better future - and this requires the generosity, openness, connection and agility that comes from oracy.

A recent oracy commission, chaired by educationalist Geoff Barton, made some compelling recommendations about how oracy should become an entitlement for every child - a fourth R. Not some add on to the school curriculum, but woven throughout school life and given the same status as reading and writing.

Young people from all backgrounds and all parts of the country, must get the chance to find their voice and hone the ability to speak and listen to a high level. Adults of course need the same.

Oracy is the superpower that all of us need in these insecure, chaotic and troubled times.