But, in truth, if we’ve learnt anything over recent years, it’s that great practice in classrooms can’t be mandated from Whitehall. Instead, it’s now over to us - the teaching profession - to make it happen. Let us know your #oracy priorities, as we move from talk to action.

Now we’re talking about our recommendations at conferences, at school & trust training events, and behind the scenes with officials & policy-makers. We’ve fed into the Curriculum & Assessment Review; and will do the same with reviews of leadership & teaching standards.

Then in October 2024, we launched our report, ‘We Need to Talk’. It was well received and led to (mostly) constructive debate about the implications of #oracy education. We called oracy ‘the fourth ‘R’ – as fundamental as reading, writing & arithmetic:

oracyeducationcommission.co.uk/wp-content/u...

So in April 2024, we established our independent Commission on the Future of Oracy Education in England, initiated and supported by the charity @voice21oracy.bsky.social. This is its wide-ranging and diverse group of Commissioners:

Also, as Leader of the Opposition, Sir Keir Starmer signalled that #oracy would be a key part of the Labour Party’s future ‘Opportunity Mission':

labour.org.uk/updates/pres...

Revisiting #oracy in 2024 felt timely, partly because it was 50 years since the completion of the all-encompassing Bullock Report, ‘A Language for Life’, which said:

www.education-uk.org/documents/bu...

Last year, lots of us were talking about #oracy. Here’s a quick retrospective:

Oracy isn’t new. A useful discussion of what oracy means and why it matters to children’s learning and personal development is here, via our ‘Speaking Volumes’ papers:

oracyeducationcommission.co.uk/wp-content/u...