Comparing Talk: The Oracy Hundred

Are you interested in taking part in pioneering research to better understand the impact of your school’s oracy provision on your students? Voice 21 has developed an innovative oracy assessment to help monitor impact and progress – we now need your help! 

What is it?

Voice 21 have developed an innovative oracy assessment which will enable schools to understand the impact of their provision on students’ oracy skills, and to monitor progress. Following successful proof-of-concept and small-scale trials, we are now recruiting 100 pioneering Voice 21 Oracy Schools for our first large scale pilot.

Our approach uses ‘comparative judgement’  to  assess students’ oracy skills .  Brand-new software combines expertise from a range of assessors around the UK, as well as our own Voice 21 oracy experts, to create a reliable score for each student. 

How to sign up:

If you would like to take part in this pioneering research to better understand the impact of your school’s oracy provision on your students, The Oracy Hundred, please express interest here. Places are limited, and will be allocated on a ‘first come, first serve’ basis, within the sampling constraints of the pilot design. For this pilot, we are only recruiting schools working with Year 5 pupils – we will seek to work with students in other age groups as soon as we can. 

Why take part?

Questions about how to assess oracy are some of the most frequently asked by the teachers we work with. Is every student making progress? How can I know? How can I track and record this? How can progress in oracy be shared with students and their families in a way that is meaningful?

We want to create an oracy assessment process which helps to answer some of these questions  but to do this we need your help!

Participating schools will receive:

• Access to the webinar “Introduction to Oracy Assessment” – unlimited places for staff in participating schools
• Through piloting our assessment tool, the ability to develop your understanding of students’ oracy, including:
  • A reliable grade given to each student’s oracy task, showing how they compare to students in your own school and to Voice 21 Oracy Schools nationally. 
  • A formative assessment pack, designed to work in tandem with the summative judgement approach, including level descriptors, peer assessment templates and suggestions for feedback and next steps
• Access to the workshop “Using your Oracy Assessment Results” – developing expert practice as oracy assessors

What will I need to do?

Participating schools will need to:

• Complete and video the assessment task with 9 students (this will take around 1hr total) during the filming window: 6-17 November
  • Students must be in Year 5
  • The assessment task will involve some group teaching and prompt video (provided), and a filmed 1 minute ‘summary’ presentation from each student 
• Commit to providing 2 hours of teacher-assessment time using our innovative Comparative Judgement platform during the assessment window: 27 November  – 8 December
• Ensure at least one teacher, although more are welcome, is able to attend the Introduction to Oracy Assessment webinar. This should be the teacher(s) who will facilitate the assessment in school, and provide the teacher-assessment time.
• Sign an MOU with Voice 21 and a Service Agreement (including data-sharing agreement) )with RM, who provide the comparative judgement platform
• Return consent forms for all participating students 

You can sign up for The Oracy Hundred here, or contact [email protected] with any queries.