Back in September last year, Labour leader Keir Starmer unveiled his party’s flagship education policy: a drive for oracy, or public speaking, to be at the centre of the national curriculum.
As Starmer said at the time, his government would put confident speaking ‘at the heart of’ teaching in schools, with these skills potentially making the difference between young people getting and not getting a job later on in life.
It was clear at the time that the main driver of the policy was Starmer himself, who was apparently keen to smash the ‘class ceiling’.
Is his oracy hobby horse now being stabled though? Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson spoke to The Spectator’s Katy Balls at a live recording of the Women with Balls podcast at conference today. Asked about the oracy policy, Phillipson appeared more equivocal about its implementation, saying:
Where it comes to oracy, none of that is standalone but how we embed that into the work of schools, and that’s what we’ve asked the [national curriculum] review panel to consider.
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