What happens when talk becomes the norm, not the novelty?
Across Dudley Academies Trust, our work on oral language development started with a straightforward belief:
pupils learn better when they are taught to talk well.
High‑quality talk helps pupils rehearse ideas, test understanding, build vocabulary, and learn to reason with others.
The wider evidence is clear: when oral language is taught deliberately and systematically, pupils gain academically, socially, and emotionally, with improvements reported across English, maths, and science, alongside stronger retention and reasoning (Jay et al., 2017; Gorard et al., 2015; Hanley et al., 2015).
This is also an equity issue. Pupils facing disadvantage often benefit most when classrooms routinely make space for structured speaking and listening.
Our Explore phase combined that national picture with our own trust diagnostics. We found delays in early oral language, particularly for White British boys in EYFS and we saw how this connected to weaker outcomes in reading, writing, and comprehension across KS1 and KS2.
Staff also reported real variation in pupils’ confidence and clarity when explaining their thinking. For us, this is why oracy matters beyond English: it links directly to our disadvantaged strategy, vocabulary acquisition, and metacognition how pupils explain, monitor, and refine their thinking in real time.
It also links to leadership and culture, because routines only stick when expectations are consistent and reinforced.
Before we could scale anything, we needed a shared language. To reduce variation and build a coherent approach, we aligned practice with the following:
This helped staff plan, model, and assess talk more precisely so “oracy” didn’t just mean confidence or presentation. It meant teachable behaviours that pupils could practise, improve, and transfer across subjects.
In practical terms, it helped us be clearer about what we wanted pupils to do during talk:
listen actively
build meaning together
respond in ways that move thinking forward
no simply “sharing answers”.
A key implementation challenge emerged early: many colleagues associated oracy mainly with presentational talk, while exploratory talk, the talk that shapes thinking was less understood and less routinely planned.
So, before scaling strategies, we focused on readiness. This involved:
Listening walks
staff reflection
framework‑based audits
all of which helped us diagnose need, clarify expectations, and sequence support. That mattered, because one‑off activities don’t change habits; consistent routines do.
From there, we built teacher knowledge through sustained, coherent CPD across the Trust. The sequence moved from readiness (definitions, research, benchmarking) to the fundamentals of speaking and listening (talk types, exploratory versus presentational talk, and dialogic routines), and then into curriculum planning using the Oracy Framework. Crucially, staff didn’t just hear about strategies, they practised modelling, sentence stems, and repeatable routines, with follow‑up coaching, rehearsal, and feedback to move learning from training rooms into classrooms.
We also made sure oracy sat inside curriculum and pedagogy, not alongside it. Talk tasks and planning grids supported teachers to decide when pupils would rehearse ideas, test thinking with peers, and present conclusions.
In maths, for example, a sharper focus on elaborated code and structured reasoning improved the precision of pupils’ explanations and strengthened conceptual understanding. That’s an important point: oracy raises the quality of thinking, not just the volume of talk.
and designed professional development that changes practice by combining the four mechanisms building knowledge, motivating staff, developing techniques, and embedding practice with modelling, coaching, rehearsal, and feedback.
Monitoring and evaluation helped us anticipate barriers and refine approaches over time.
Four key takeaways
1. shared definitions reduce variation. 2. structured talk promotes equity, particularly for pupils with SEND, EAL, and those facing disadvantage. 3. sustained CPD embeds routines more effectively than one‑off training. 4. Finally, monitoring sustains momentum: leadership oversight, quality assurance, and regular review ensure that oracy translates into improved classroom practice and remains a long‑term priority.
Making oracy ordinary is about creating classrooms where every pupil learns through talk as well as about talk where structured dialogue, explicit modelling, and deliberate practice become part of the daily rhythm of learning.
Our journey has shown that when schools invest in shared language, coherent systems, and sustained professional development, pupils don’t just speak more they think more deeply, reason more clearly, and engage more confidently with the world around them. By embedding oracy within curriculum, culture, and leadership, we are not only improving outcomes today but equipping young people with the communication, collaboration, and critical thinking skills they need for their futures.
