Oracy

Should oracy be embedded across the curriculum or
taught discretely?
Teachers overwhelmingly feel oracy should form part of regular teaching, rather than be taught as a
separate topic or extra-curricular activity. xxxi This view was significantly more common amongst primary
and secondary teachers than post-16 of FE teachers although over three quarters of post-16 and FE
teachers also believe this.
How should oracy be taught? 906
Mainly in the classroom, as a discrete subject or
topic
Mainly Mainly the classroom, in the classroom, a discrete as part subject of a regular or subject
topic teaching
83%
83%
8%
Mainly Mainly the classroom, an extra-curricular as part of a activity, regular in subject addition to
teaching classroom teaching
Mainly as an extra-curricular activity, in addition to
Don’t know
classroom teaching
Don’t know
Mainly as an extra-curricular activity, rather than in
the classroom
1%
1%
4%
1% 3%
1%
4%
8%
3%
Mainly as an extra-curricular activity, rather than in
the classroom
None of these
None of these
Teachers’ rationale for this approach is
that oracy is both a ‘generic’ process that
underpins good teaching and learning,
but also because specific spoken
language matters in different subjects
in different ways:
“I don’t know I would want to send them to classes in
[oracy]. I would prefer it’s in every lesson. So if you’re
doing a science lesson now, what the science teacher
is doing is [saying] ‘I want you to talk like a scientist’.
Oracy is then underpinning my responsibility as a
science teacher [to make] you speak like a scientist,
read like a scientist, and write like a scientist”
Geoff Barton, Headteacher, King Edward VI School
Some schools, though, feel that teaching
oracy discretely helps meet the needs of
their pupils more effectively. St Ambrose
Barlow RC High School began trialling a
discrete oracy curriculum with its 2016/17
year 7 cohort as part of an Education
Endowment Foundation (EEF) funded trial
of the Voice 21 and University of Cambridge
Oracy Framework. 134 Bec Tulloch who
teaches there feels that:
“The kids that we’re picking up in Salford, they need
us to do that, they need to have that space and time
where we make it part of the culture of the school.
If you ask me in ten years … ‘does this school need
that?’ then maybe we’ll be in a different place … but
from the point we’re starting at where our students
have such a weakness that we have noticed and
acknowledged, we have to do something about that”
Bec Tulloch, Drama Teacher St Ambrose Barlow RC
52
xxxi
Practitioners were asked how they thought oracy should be taught, with oracy defined as ‘the development of children’s capacity to
use speech to express their thoughts and communicate with others in education and in life, and talk through which teaching and learning
is mediated’ (based on Alexander, 2012: 10).