The new Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Framework, published earlier this week, recognises the crucial role oracy plays in teachers’ professional practice. Voice 21 welcomes this deliberate shift in emphasis: when we’re teaching and learning, we’re speaking and listening. However, more needs to be done to set out the breadth and depth of oracy. Like literacy, it is a large domain that encompasses a wide range of contexts, genres and purposes. By not addressing this, the Framework risks reinforcing, rather than challenging, common misconceptions around oracy, especially in regard to what constitutes ‘high quality’ talk in the classroom. 

Oracy is the responsibility of every teacher 

The Framework clearly states that the development of oral language skills (oracy) is the responsibility of every teacher.

“Every teacher can improve pupils’ communication and literacy, including by explicitly teaching reading, writing, and oral language skills specific to individual disciplines”. 

This recommendation may lead teachers to consider disciplinary oracy: the ways in which talk varies across subject domains, in response to the ways in which standards of evidence, theory or argument vary. As they develop their knowledge and understanding of oracy, each teacher is able to induct students into the conventions for academic talk in different subjects: supporting them to ‘speak like’ a scientist, mathematician or historian. In so doing, they are able to expose and develop subject-appropriate ways of thinking and learning. 

The breadth and depth of an oracy education 

The Framework risks over-prioritising vocabulary as a method for developing students’ oracy:

“…by teaching new words and how to use and understand words within sentences or longer texts”

Teaching vocabulary is just one aspect of developing students’ oral language. The Oracy Framework contextualises appropriate vocabulary choice within the ‘Linguistic’ strand, which sits alongside ‘Physical, ‘Cognitive’ and ‘Social & Emotional’. Together, these four strands constitute the skills that ought to be attended to when delivering a high-quality oracy education. 

‘High-quality’ oral language

The Framework refers, throughout, to “high-quality oral language”. Without further explanation, this risks a narrow, arbitrary understanding of ‘high-quality’ being inappropriately applied across different oracy contexts, which may make the classroom and school environment less inclusive. 

The example given in the Framework of “high-quality oral language” is “full sentences”. Unfortunately, this example reinforces rather than challenges a narrow understanding of ‘high-quality oral language’. Full sentences are rarely found in spoken language: they may be seen in very formal repertoires (e.g. essays read aloud as lectures), but beyond this, they are rarely appropriate. This is especially the case in educationally productive forms of talk in the classroom where students are learning through talk. In these cases, ‘full sentences’ can act as a barrier to students’ ability to develop their own understanding, and that of others. 

Instead, students should have the opportunity to develop their oracy through exposure to a wide range of genres and contexts (just as we expect for reading and writing). This allows students to develop their linguistic repertoire as well as to make best use of the linguistic resources already at their disposal, which might include languages other than English, accents and dialects that differ to their teacher’s, and an informal register. All of these linguistic resources can feature in “high-quality oral language”.

We recommend:

A growing understanding of the importance of oracy in the classroom makes this a critical time for the Department for Education to offer clear guidance on what constitutes an oracy education, and to challenge misconceptions that stand in the way of established best practice. 

The Oracy Framework and The Oracy Benchmarks draw on the best available evidence, and the practice of schools and teachers around the UK, to offer a robust starting point for anyone who wants to know more about oracy, and how to deliver the oracy education that is the entitlement of every child.