Effective leadership is key to embedding oracy across a school and yet, in a recent survey*, only 50% of respondents could confidently identify who holds responsibility for oracy in their setting.
An Oracy Leader is a school leader who has responsibility for promoting oracy and overseeing the development of a school’s oracy provision. They are responsible for ensuring that all children benefit from a high-quality oracy education.
Without dedicated leadership, oracy can feel both everywhere and nowhere in a school. The more confident Oracy Leaders feel in their role, the more progress their schools make towards embedding a sustained, high-quality oracy education. Oracy Leaders play a crucial role in building staff capacity and developing a strategic vision for oracy in a school.
At Voice 21, we have supported thousands of schools to build capacity for oracy leadership. Recently, the Headteacher and oracy team from St Barnabas C of E Primary School in Worcestershire, which is part of the Voice 21 Oracy Schools network, shared insights into their multilayered approach to leading oracy.
Leaders at St Barnabas are deeply committed to embedding oracy across all areas of school life, ensuring that students develop the communication skills they need to thrive both in and beyond the classroom.
“Oracy education isn’t just about vocabulary and it isn’t just about articulacy – it’s more than a strategy. It’s about developing a sense of belonging for every child so that they feel part of the school community.”
“If we can help children have that sense of belonging through oracy provision and the kind of culture that you get when this is embedded, then we are going to help our young people feel valued.”
“Children will have a better sense of belonging in the classroom – because they feel more confident to talk in every subject – and also in the world around them because they’re used to using their voice and speaking to a wide range of people in different contexts.”
A structured series of whole-school events throughout the academic year creates opportunities for students to showcase their oracy skills. In doing so, the oracy team has built an inclusive culture of celebration and curiosity around spoken language that works cohesively with the development of oracy skills in the classroom.
The school invites inspirational visitors, such as poets, authors, and campaigners to work with students and to provide students with authentic audiences for their own talk. Importantly, these events present role models that reflect and celebrate the diversity of the school community.
“We started with a couple of events to raise the profile of oracy – the poetry slam was the first one and the children just blew us away. We then did speech making, debating and storytelling and what we have now is a thoughtfully planned series of opportunities across the year that provide students with rich and ambitious experiences of spoken language and galvanise the school community around oracy education.”
The oracy team at St Barnabas understand the challenge of implementing a new initiative and have taken a gradual, “drip-feeding” approach to bring all staff on board. A culture of openness and experimentation empowers staff to trial new strategies and to reflect on both successes and challenges as part of the process.
“Teachers and support staff are feeling the pressure for all sorts of reasons and so we tried really hard not to overload and overwhelm people. We started in really small ways, for example we would model something in a staff meeting for everyone to try that week. Then we’d come back and talk about it the following week.”
“To support this, we added ‘oracy development’ into our staff meeting agenda. We decided to shift what we cover in the meetings and create more of a focus on teaching and learning – moving away from more procedural items to create the time and space needed for teachers and support staff to build oracy expertise.”
“Ultimately, we decided to invest the time needed to make sure that everybody was hearing the same messages about oracy education – that we were all building a shared understanding of what it is and the impact it has on our students.”
At St Barnabas, successful oracy leadership ensures that staff are empowered and supported to develop oracy practice and that students are provided with opportunities for oracy that both challenge and excite them in and beyond the classroom – an approach that has led to long-term impact and sustainability.**
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* In a 2025 survey of 3000+ users by Teacher Tapp
** In a recent Ofsted report (December 2024), inspectors highlighted that: “The school continues to excel in its work with pupils’ oracy. Pupils show high levels of confidence when talking about their learning and achievements.”
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