Across our Trust, we believe oracy is a powerful tool for equity, empowerment, and excellence.
Our vision is for every child to develop the confidence to articulate and present themselves clearly and with purpose— to find their voice, use it powerfully, and be heard.
Through high-quality oracy education, we empower children to:
- Understand themselves as individuals, and recognise the important role they play in their communities and the wider world
- Express, articulate, and advocate for their needs, views, and values using rich, thoughtful language
- Experience happiness and fulfilment, underpinned by positive relationships and meaningful communication
- Be the best version of themselves, growing in confidence, empathy, and self-awareness
- Make a difference in the world, using their voice to influence, lead, and inspire
- Challenge inequality and contribute to achieving social equity through respectful dialogue and active citizenship
- Achieve high levels of success, both academically and personally
We are committed to ensuring oracy is embedded across every phase of education — so that every child, regardless of background, has the skills, confidence, and opportunity to thrive in life and learning.
Oracy mission
- To improve children’s confidence when speaking to others
- To empower pupils to have a voice
- To enable opportunities for children to be able to articulate themselves appropriately
- To develop a framework to improve oracy across the trust
- To develop speaking and listening skills
- To open doors to opportunity
Trust strands of focus:
- Articulation
- Confidence
- Vocabulary knowledge
- Building vocabulary
- Turn taking
- Speaking and listening
- Enabling children to be able to express themselves through speech
- Staff CPD
- Develop higher order thinking skills
Oracy Intent
- To provide pupils with a voice that is valued
- For pupils to be able to actively listen and speak with fluency
Desired Impact
- Improved language skills
- Confident speakers
- Staff knowledgeable and able to improve oracy in the pupils they teach
- Children will be good communicators
- Gaps to be narrowed
Implementation
- As talk is integral to learning, pupils will be encouraged in all lessons to employ talk tactics. These will encourage pupils to summarise, clarify, challenge, build, probe and instigate ideas, building on critical thinking and confidence. Staff will model good oracy by articulating the thought processes and underpinning talk.
- As a Trust, we aim to encourage confident fluent speakers who can articulate their ideas in a wide range of situations through the following whole school strategies:
- Speaking in standard English and in full sentences
- Direct vocabulary instruction
- Debate
- Talk tactics (specific strategies and techniques used to enhance communication, critical thinking, and learning through dialogue)
- Pupils will experience a range of oracy explicit activities across the curriculum including:
- Talk like an expert
- Critical thinking
- Debates
- Talking trios
- Collaborative work
- Reading lessons
- Presentation of learning
- Questioning
- Modelling of tier 2 and 3 words
“Talk is the most powerful tool of communication in the classroom and it’s fundamentally central to the acts of teaching and learning.” Professor Frank Hardman.
Take a look at our oracy charters: