Oracy for all

Today the Oracy Commission released its report and recommendations to put spoken language at the heart of the education system in England. Nothing in this report is really rocket science, but that is part of its attraction. It recommends totally sensible things to improve the futures of the 1 in 5 children who are currently struggling to talk and understand words. And we really need practical solutions for this group of children to turn around their futures and prevent them from falling behind at school, getting mental health problems and ending up in trouble as young adults. 

It is extremely hard to disagree with recommendations like teachers getting information about speech and language challenges during teacher training. The strange thing is that this hasn’t happened before. What society would think that teachers can do without strategies to help 20% of their students?  

It is simply odd that for so many decades our education system has implicitly assumed that it can achieve outcomes in reading, writing and maths without concentrating equally on children’s spoken language skills. It is so much harder to learn to read if you don’t understand what the words mean or how to recognise each sound. It is really difficult to learn conceptual words like ‘volume’ or ‘size’ in maths if you haven’t got good language skills.  

But the simplicity of this argument doesn’t mean that this isn’t going to be tough. Our education system has simply got into some bad habits where speech and language is concerned. Too many people think this agenda is about debating skills or speaking with a certain accent. When actually it’s about one of the most fundamental skills a child or adult can learn: the ability to communicate.  

I really hope that this report is the start of a wake-up call: in schools, in early years, in government, in education leadership that no child can flourish without speech, language and communication skills. And that it makes us question our approaches. One of the things the report calls for is for early language interventions to be provided ‘at the earliest opportunity’. That is far from the approach of the current Government or the previous one. It is in fact only funding one single language intervention during Reception year, even though successful interventions can happen from age 2. That needs urgent attention, as we set out last month in our Getting In Early report. TLDR? We’re not currently getting in early and that is foolish on economic grounds as well as in terms of children’s outcomes.

We also need to make sure that by setting spoken language goals, we don’t end up stigmatising children who find it difficult to achieve them. The report recommends that schools are given both diagnostic and formative assessment tools. That is right and something we have been calling for at Speech and Language UK for years. We know that by and large what gets measured gets done. And without tools for spoken language or oracy, schools will keep prioritising literacy and numeracy without realising there is a common essential ingredient for these other outcomes.  

But children who struggle in this area need to be supported and that means investment in speech and language therapy as well as the support that the education system can give directly. We can’t have expectations of children and then fail to provide the support they need to be able to achieve.  

Finally, we need to take a flexible approach to how children communicate in these assessments. As part of the Speech, Language and Communication Alliance, we held an excellent discussion with the Oracy Commissioners about the different forms of communication that children need to use. Whether children prefer communicating using British Sign Language or visual symbols or Alternative and Augmented Communication, our education system must equally value what they tell us.  

 We will absolutely be tracking the Government’s response to this report and hoping that these recommendations are taken seriously, whether in the curriculum and assessment review or in the work Ofsted is doing on inclusion. But we really mustn’t pretend that shifting the education system’s focus is going to be easy. It is a very simple thing to realise that we should all be thinking more about speech and language. It is going to take years of dedication and hard work to achieve, but it will 100% be worth it.