Embedding structured oracy in the primary curriculum

LAUREN KEARNEY, SENIOR PRODUCT DEVELOPER, ENGLISH SPEAKING BOARD (INTERNATIONAL) LTD, UK Introduction If we accept that ‘reading and writing float on a sea of talk’ (Britton, 1970, p. 164), then it is remarkable that learners’ speaking and listening skills are not systematically developed with the same explicit focus as reading and writing. The Oracy Education Commission (2024, p. 40) notes that most teachers ‘lack tools for the diagnostic, supportive and formative assessment of oracy’ and are ‘not resourced to appraise progress in oracy and use this understanding to adapt and inform planning’. This concern is echoed in Ofsted’s English subject report (2024): ‘the curriculum for spoken language is considered in far less detail than the curriculum for reading and writing. It is viewed as a pedagogy rather than also being an object of study in itself.’ This case study examines what happened when a community primary school (with 56 per cent of learners eligible f