There is clear recognition of the importance of access to high-quality oracy education and opportunities – and the significant impact this can have across all spheres: academic, professional, cognitive, social, emotional. The Covid-19 pandemic, and
resulting periods of remote learning and isolation, brought fresh urgency to this issue, with many young people deprived of opportunities for rich talk and spoken language development.
As schools seek to address current challenges, close gaps, and take oracy education to the next level, NACE members have focused on sharing effective approaches to developing oracy skills as an integral part of cognitively
challenging provision. This has been part of our wider making space for able learners research initiative.
This report calls for oracy to become the fourth “R” of education, with equal status to reading, writing and arithmetic. It includes recommendations as to how this could be achieved, and short case studies of effective practice in schools.
Using comprehensive evidence submitted to the All Party Parliamentary Inquiry, this report presents a case as to why oracy education matters, the changes required to ensure that all children and young people can benefit from oracy education,
and the practical steps that need to be taken now to make progress on achieving this.
The Oracy Skills Framework (OSF) specifies the various skills young people need to develop to deal with a range of different talk situations. The OSF is designed to help school leaders, teachers and pupils understand the physical, linguistic,
cognitive and social/emotional skills that enable successful discussion, inspiring speech and effective communication.
The Oracy Benchmarks seek to address how the Oracy Skills Framework (above) translates into practice, creating shared expectations for oracy teaching in schools.
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)’s overview of research on the impact of oral language interventions – reporting a very high impact for very low cost based on extensive evidence.
One of numerous articles Alex Quigley has published on oracy, this piece examines enablers and barriers to effective implementation of oracy strategies.
This blog post delves into the multifaceted nature of oracy, arguing against the conception of oracy as a universally transferable skill, and highlights the importance of acknowledging its subject-specific attributes, claiming that proficiency
in oracy is inherently tied to mastery over the subject matter.
This blog explores the benefits of oracy, the research supporting its integration into classroom practice, and how teachers can make it an integral part of the curriculum.
The Talk for Writing approach seeks to enable children to read and write independently for a variety of audiences and purposes within different subjects. A key feature is that children internalise the language structures needed to write through ‘talking the text’, as well as close reading.
Amy Gaunt and Alice Stott, Transforming Teaching and Learning Through Talk: The Oracy Imperative (2019)
Publication championing the value of identifying and teaching effective talking and listening in the classroom. Combining research, personal insights and practical strategies.
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