Preparing students for the world of work can feel like a daunting task. But we know that an oracy-rich approach to teaching and learning supports and enriches employment education and career-readiness.

Earlier this year, the Milburn interim review identified nearly one million young people currently classified as Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET).

Oracy underpins the six Essential Employment Skills identified by the National Foundation for Educational Research – without these vital skills, our young people will be at a disadvantage as they enter higher education and employment.

Collectively, we can ensure that students nationally are given every opportunity to develop essential oracy skills so that every child benefits from a high-quality oracy education, which enables them to thrive in school, work and life.

So, how can schools and colleges prepare their students for life beyond school?

Our brand new resource seeks to do just that…

Funded through Royal Holloway’s Economic and Social Research Council Impact Acceleration Account, The Oracy for Employability Toolkit has been co-developed by Voice 21, Royal Holloway, University London and the Windsor Forest College Group. It is a three-part workshop series designed to demonstrate how a high-quality oracy education can be harnessed to elevate careers education in schools and colleges.

Piloted by Post-16 students and created for secondary and Post-16 students, this resource is the first of its kind to explicitly model how oracy supports the development of employment skills.

The toolkit includes three workshops:

• Participating Voices, which explores the link between language and identity, and the choices we make in different talk contexts;
• Stories of Self, which asks students to reflect on how they tell compelling stories about themselves and their experiences, and learn how to mobilise these skills in an interview context; and
• Group Discussion, which unpicks what an effective exploratory group discussion sounds like, and how oracy skills can be strengthened through seminar-style discussions

Click here to download this vital resource and begin making links between oracy and employability in your setting today.

Top Tips

• Take time to read through the Teacher Facilitation Pack before getting started. We encourage you to think about your specific context and priorities, and reflect on where there are existing opportunities to make use of this resource.
• This resource can be used in many ways. Be intentional about which students you want to trial it with, including how and when you will do this.
• Although the learning is deliberately structured, make adaptations to suit your students’ oracy learning needs.

Get in touch

Voice 21’s Research Team are keen to hear how schools and colleges decide to make use of The Oracy for Employability Toolkit. If your setting would like to share your implementation stories with us, please get in touch via [email protected] – we look forward to hearing from you!