For oracy teaching to be effective, it needs a whole-school approach. But what does that mean in practice? Louisa Searle shares five tips that secondary schools can implement right now
Speak up: Students need to be taught the foundations of oracy just as with any other skill – and they need lots of opportunities to practise speaking - Adobe Stock

The publication of We need to talk, the final report from the Oracy Education Commission in England (2024), makes a compelling case for the importance of oracy (speaking and listening) – not just as skills that will help young people to learn and to flourish personally, but as tools that will help strengthen our communities and society as a whole.

Making oracy the fourth “R” (alongside reading, writing and arithmetic) will, the report argues, bring a whole host of benefits that have been evidenced in earlier studies, from increasing attainment (Gascoigne & Gross, 2017; Hanley et al, 2015), confidence and emotional wellbeing (Jay et al, 2017), to boosting employability, social mobility, and helping to close the growing disadvantage gap (EEF, 2021).

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