08.11.2016 Views

Oracy

2fcBkno

2fcBkno

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

School leaders<br />

Support from senior leaders plays a critical role in increasing the status and uptake of oracy-based<br />

teaching strategies across a school. Several interviewees argue that it would be near impossible to<br />

embed such approaches without support from leadership.<br />

Linking oracy to Ofsted<br />

Susannah Haygarth is Language and Literacy<br />

Coordinator at Chorlton High School in<br />

Manchester. She explains that leaders in her<br />

school feel oracy will help her school improve<br />

its Ofsted rating in light of recent inspection<br />

feedback that suggests pupils should be<br />

invited to contribute more in class discussions:<br />

“We had Ofsted at the end of July in the last week<br />

before we broke up, and we got ‘Good’ and we felt<br />

that we nearly got ‘Outstanding’, …and now what<br />

we feel is needed to push up to ‘Outstanding’ as a<br />

school is almost like reaching for the next level, the<br />

next level of learning, and we think that oracy is really<br />

going to elevate us and our kids to be able to do<br />

things that they couldn’t do before”<br />

Susannah Haygarth, Language and Literacy Coordinator,<br />

Chorlton High School<br />

Given school leadership’s enthusiasm, the<br />

challenge at Chorlton High School is now<br />

one of delivery rather than mindset:<br />

“At the very top our school leaders one hundred<br />

per cent believe that talk is the precursor to good<br />

learning … but I think for a lot of schools nowadays<br />

that is a complete shift [in thinking…]. What we have<br />

to do now is, it’s not teachers taking it seriously, it’s<br />

us as leaders within the school making [oracy]<br />

a reality. It’s that culture shift”<br />

Susannah Haygarth, Language and Literacy Coordinator,<br />

Chorlton High School<br />

Furthermore, while our survey indicates few school leaders actively discourage oracy,<br />

many interviewees feel that school leaders rarely actively endorse it or, more importantly,<br />

make it a priority in their school. This can be because they have other priorities, believe<br />

oracy happens ‘anyway’, or do not think it is relevant.<br />

Interviewees suggest that one way to ‘deliver’ oracy is to have a named person take<br />

responsibility for it, helping raise its status and improving classroom practice. Yet this<br />

approach remains rare, with just over a tenth of survey respondents aware of someone<br />

in their school holding such a role. xxxvii<br />

66<br />

xxxvii<br />

Practitioners were asked about who at their school is responsible for oracy, with oracy defined as ‘the development of children’s<br />

capacity to use speech to express their thoughts and communicate with others in education and in life, and talk through which teaching and<br />

learning is mediated’ (based on Alexander, 2012: 10).

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!