Is Labour right about the power of oracy?

It is no surprise that a speechwriter and a barrister-turned-politician would think the art of speech-making should be taught in schools. It’s like pig farmers at a barbecue eulogising the nutritional value and superior flavour of pork. 

The speechwriter in question is Peter Hyman and the former barrister is Sir Keir Starmer, Britain’s presumptive next PM.

In serious fields of scholarly inquiry, the goal is to make the complex appear simple. Unfortunately, the field of education sits under the social sciences, which try to make the commonplace sound complicated. This is why making speeches and discussing ideas are dubbed ‘oracy’ and are the Labour party’s new big education idea. 

Is this what the good people of Worthington and Dudley North demand from their education policy? If so, I’ve missed it. Will oracy’s purported links to social mobility allow working-class children to enter unpaid media internships or jobbing-actor-with-a-trust-fund like their privileged peers? Is that why Labour is pursuing it? A more likely origin for this initiative lies with Peter Hyman.