From Quiet Classrooms to Confident Voices: The Oracy Revolution

Remember getting a big cross in your NQT observation because you hadn’t used talk partners? Those think-pair-share moments sometimes felt contrived at the time but had solid rationale behind them. As a headteacher turned education consultant, I’ve watched the pendulum swing dramatically in the other direction whereby quiet classrooms came to be seen as the holy grail. With a growing body of literature (including Ofsted’s recent English Subject Report, 2024) highlighting oracy’s importance, it’s worth examining how our learners have drifted into passivity and where we need to go.

How Did We Get Here?

1. The Curriculum Squeeze

I’m telling you nothing new here – the curriculum is bursting at the seams. When Ofsted announced their curriculum focus, leaders and teachers faced a monumental task: transmitting an enormous volume of knowledge in a limited time with an increasing proportion of young people not at school to hear it. The only practical solution? Strip everything back to direct instruction. Exit the whiteboard interaction, enter the perfectly crafted presentation. Leaders and teachers up and down the country clung to Rosenshine’s Principles like a life raft that would save them from the perils of an uninspiring curriculum delivered in the same way lesson after lesson.

I’ve noticed a telling shift in our technology use – from interactive Promethean boards where pupils would come up and work side by side with the teacher to manipulate content, to PowerPoint and Canva presentations. The clue’s in the name – we’re presenting rather than interacting. As Voice 21’s research (2024) shows, this shift has particularly impacted disadvantaged pupils’ spoken language development. This isn’t a criticism of our incredibly hardworking teachers and leaders; many are actively resisting this shift while feeling increasingly disempowered. It’s an observation of how the ever-adaptable educators have had to adjust in order to deliver the impossible.

To give some balance here, it hasn’t all been bad. Although we may have seen a more passive pedagogy, there have been some significant advancements in education too. The research into, focus on and understanding of the science of learning has been hugely beneficial for schools, leaders and learners. The intense focus on curriculum has also meant that practitioners know exactly what they are teaching. They have carefully though about when the best time to introduce and revisit it, and they have a much greater awareness of why they are teaching their curriculum. What schools have achieved with their curriculum planning has been absolutely phenomenal and will have long term positive benefits for pupils. Let’s celebrate our wins!

What’s missing is the spark. The creativity. As Hywel Roberts puts it, finding a way to, “Get them to lean into the curriculum.” We’ve spent all of this time creating incredibly detailed, carefully curated and well-constructed curriculums, but it’s all for nothing if nobody engages with it.

As Dame Alison Peacock wisely noted in her recent TES interview: “I want somewhere I work to be joyful. To mess about a bit. To have a laugh.” If this is crucial for adult professionals, how much more important is it for our young learners? It’s interesting to note the declining attendance we’re seeing in our schools which seems to be falling in correlation with the increased exam pressure in all phases. It also coincides with the advent of pupils sitting through six PowerPoints a day and primary practitioners feeling blocked from making connections between subjects and bringing the curriculum to life in an exciting and meaningful way.

2. The Assessment Pressure Cooker

Remember planning drama activities before writing tasks? In my Year 2 class, we’d all dress up to act out scenes from traditional tales. We would use Pie Corbett’s Talk for Writing to deeply embed language patterns and story structures. Then we’d all swap costumes and mix up the plots accordingly by manipulating what we knew. It wasn’t just fun – it served crucial purposes:

  • Language internalisation
  • Confidence building
  • Speaking and listening development
  • Genuine engagement and enjoyment

With the increasing time demands of phonics catch up programmes in Year 2, something has had to give. Unfortunately, that ‘something’ seems to be the rich classroom discourse that made learning stick. Whilst I gave my Year 2 pupils regular catch up intervention if they hadn’t met the PSC in Year 1, it was nowhere near as regimented as it is now (yet 100% of pupils passed the recheck in a school in the top 5% for deprivation). As the Oracy Education Commission (2024) notes, interactive oracy elements aren’t merely ‘nice to haves’ – they’re fundamental to learning. Perhaps those regular drama opportunities are what bolstered a less relentless approach to phonics catch up.

For clarity and balance, I must make the point that I was not flippant or dismissive of my pupils’ need to learn to read before they left key stage one. I was absolutely fixated on making sure they could. The point I am making is that there were other facets to my approach than phonics, phonics and more phonics. I should also stress that the national improvements in the planning, delivery, resourcing of phonics have been life-changing for many pupils. Schools’ efforts and achievements have been astonishing and absolutely worthwhile: getting children reading early changes everything. In a similar vein to curriculum, perhaps now that we have the foundations in place, it’s time for schools to use their expertise and creativity for a more nuanced approach to phonics that best meets the needs of their learners.

3. The Early Years Dilemma

The drive for 95% phonics success has created an unintended consequence. As one Early Years practitioner told me recently, “We’re so busy running phonics groups that we barely have time for the high-quality interactions that develop language and would help our children the most.” It’s not because staff lack the skills or drive to get in the areas and facilitate play, there just isn’t enough time for it. With a few more adults in the setting, perhaps we’d be able to spin all the plates (but I’ll spare you a rant about budgets!).

Findings from recent research (EEF, 2023) show that balanced oral language interventions significantly support phonological awareness. This confirms the innate hunch of the Early Years practitioner above. I’ll nail my colours to the mast here: NELI did not cut it for me as a balanced oral language intervention. Having a highly skilled teaching assistant removed from the setting for 45 minutes with a few pupils at a time is counterproductive in my opinion. Imagine instead that your whole EYFS team implemented carefully considered, targeted language intervention in the EYFS setting through genuine interaction and play. Not only would the focus group benefit, so would the rest of the class. In a system where we are poor on time, this kind of operational efficiency is vital.

Practical Solutions for Real Classrooms

So how do we balance these competing demands? Here’s what works:

  1. Smart Integration
    • Build talk into content delivery
    • Use structured discussion for knowledge consolidation
    • Make every interaction count
  2. Strategic Planning
    • Create clear oracy progression maps
    • Plan deliberate practice opportunities across the curriculum
    • Monitor impact without excessive documentation
  3. Teacher Empowerment
    • Invest in high-quality CPD
    • Share successful strategies
    • Build confidence in balancing priorities

Moving Forward Together

The solution isn’t returning to endless and undirected ‘talk partners’ activities, nor is it continuing with an approach reliant on presentation and transmission. It’s about finding a sweet spot where effective pedagogy (with high-quality talk at its core) meets curriculum requirements. As Wilkinson (1965) understood when he first coined the term ‘oracy’, speaking and listening aren’t extras – they’re fundamental to the learning process.

I have only scratched the surface here and couched things in very simple terms. The planning and implementation of this shift is likely to be substantially more complex in reality. There are experts in their field dedicating all of their time and energy to researching what really works. Whilst they aren’t directly in the oracy field, their approaches are based on joyful interactions. Spoken interaction is the common thread.

I recommend looking at the work of the following people:

One thing is absolutely certain: we must not go back to a time where we have to record oracy with picture collages in books and sound recordings being manually upload onto systems for nobody to listen to. There is always an anxiety about creating evidence and we’ve got to resist it. There are AI tools on the market which help teachers give efficient verbal feedback on oracy activities. You might want to look into to these to support the learning process, but keep the rationale clear. It is not purely for evidence.

Need Support?

At Peoples Education Solutions, we understand these challenges because we’ve lived them. We offer:

  • Practical CPD that acknowledges real classroom constraints
  • Implementation support that works with your current systems
  • Ongoing guidance as you develop your approach

For those interested in expanding their oracy provision, Voice 21 is doing fantastic work and I would recommend you sign up with them for 2025. It’s important to note, they have limited capacity (only about 50 schools in North Yorkshire have signed up so far). Whether through them or through us, the important thing is taking that first step toward rebalancing classroom discourse.

Ready to discuss how we can help your school find its oracy balance? Contact us at contact@peopleseducationsolutions.co.uk.

References

Ofsted (2024) ‘English Subject Report’, London: Ofsted.

Voice 21 (2024) ‘Why Oracy Matters’, Voice 21 Research Report.

Wilkinson, A. (1965) ‘The Concept of Oracy’, Educational Review, 17(4), pp.11-15.

Education Endowment Foundation (2023) ‘Oral Language Interventions’, Teaching and Learning Toolkit.

Oracy Education Commission (2024) ‘We Need to Talk’, Commission Report.