We sat down with George Vlachonikolis, Assistant Head at Headington School Oxford and an economics teacher, to talk about oracy, the Education Secretary’s new commitment to speaking, and why confidence in debate decides which subjects girls choose and stay in.

On 25 October, Education Secretary Lucy Powell announced that oracy will be given equal status to reading and writing, as a new strand of the English Curriculum. For schools that have been building speaking into their teaching for years, it is overdue recognition. Research suggests the stakes are higher for girls. Studies of economics have found that women are less willing to express an opinion and less certain of it when they do, and that in academic seminars women are interrupted more than men (linked to the research). Confidence in speaking isn’t just about one lesson; it decides who stays in the subject.

Oracy is going to have equal status with reading and writing. What was your reaction when you heard the announcement?

I welcomed Lucy Powell’s announcement, and I think it is a very positive first step.

Oracy has been gaining momentum for some time. For example, Geoff Barton’s Commission on the Future of Oracy Education report in 2024 [1] was quickly followed by Becky Francis’ Curriculum and Assessment Review in 2025 [2], which mentions oracy ’32 times’. So, in many ways, this felt like a recognition of something that has been building for a while.

I think the important question now is: what does this mean for a classroom teacher? And that’s what we’ve been exploring at Headington for the past couple of years.

Oracy has been in Headington’s development plan since 2024-25. What have you learned from embedding it, and what surprised you?

The first thing we did was to commission an external expert to carry out an oracy audit of the school. Two findings surprised me.

  • The first was that teachers were repeating students’ responses too much. The concern was that students were listening for the teacher to validate an answer, rather than listening to what their peers were saying. In a sense, the teacher’s repetition could also be read as a signal of whose contribution mattered.
  • The second finding was about activities like ‘think, pair, share’ or ‘turn to your neighbour’ which I use a lot. The audit identified that students were often waiting for their partner to finish speaking so that they could make their own point, rather than engaging with what their partner had said. It was a good reminder that giving students more opportunities to talk doesn’t necessarily mean more meaningful dialogue is taking place.

We shared the findings with staff and then established an oracy team. That team used the report to develop eight classroom principles for Headington, which have been the basis of our approach ever since. The process is now in its iterative phase; we continue to reflect and refine our practice.

Our 8 principles

One of the biggest things I’ve learned though is that oracy is such a loaded term. It means different things to different people, so distilling our vision into a set of discrete classroom practices has been one of the most useful things we’ve done. It gives everyone a shared understanding of what we’re actually trying to achieve in class.

Can you expand on your comment that “oracy is a loaded term”?

There are so many facets to this.

First, the word itself comes with a lot of baggage. Some people conflate it with elocution lessons and the idea that we need to teach students to enunciate their vowels and lose their accents. That isn’t what oracy is [3].

Some people argue that we are lowering academic standards by looking to replace reading and writing with speaking. But at the other end of the spectrum, people are arguing that we’re already in a post-literate world, where nobody reads anymore and speaking is the only form of communication that matters. And then there are those who see oracy as just another educational fad, distracting schools from more traditional goals such as knowledge, good behaviour and academic achievement.

Earlier in the year, I went to a talk by Professor Tom Wright, which reassured me that these tensions have a long history. One of his key messages was that there is no politically neutral version of oracy. Debates about oracy are never just about ‘voice’. Often, they end up reinforcing forms of hierarchy. Who is seen as articulate? Who is listened to? Who is dismissed?”

I hope that good oracy will move us beyond these debates though. In my view, oracy is inclusive: it’s about creating classrooms where every student can contribute to the construction of knowledge, to have their ideas heard and valued, and to learn from one another. For example, one simple routine that our teachers are encouraged to use is to explain a new concept and then get out of the way. Give students time to talk it through with a partner and rehearse the key ideas and technical vocabulary with the support of scaffolds. The teacher can then sample students’ explanations to check understanding.

You teach economics, a subject where girls are still underrepresented. Why does speaking matter so much there?

Economics isn’t an exact science. There is rarely a single, straightforward answer to a good economics question. Instead, a good economics answer should draw on ideas from a range of sources, weigh up different perspectives and arrive at a conclusion.

A good economics student therefore needs to be articulate enough to communicate her ideas. But she also needs to have the confidence to speak those ideas out loud to others. Without both elements, I think there is a risk that she will struggle not only to fulfil her potential as an economist, but also to have her voice heard in the wider world.

The research says women in economics are less likely to voice an opinion and are more likely to be interrupted when they do. What does a classroom look like when it’s built to change that?

I know the two articles you are referring to [4] [5]. Regarding interruptions, MIT quickly published its own guidelines for seminar leaders [6]. These included:

  • Adopting a no-interruption rule
  • Asking participants to raise their hands if they want to interject
  • Avoiding side conversations with other participants
  • Actively seeking voice equity by bringing in people whose voices might otherwise be marginalised

I would argue that all four are simply good classroom management practices. We should always give students time to finish their thoughts, establish clear expectations around interruptions, discourage side conversations and actively seek contributions from all students. This feels like standard teacher training.

Perhaps the more interesting challenge lies in eliciting opinions then. For me, it starts with establishing a no-opt-out culture. I make it clear that everyone needs to have an opinion. If they don’t have one straight away, that’s fine, but I’ll use one of four approaches, depending on the student:

  • Make it clear that I’ll come back to them, giving them time to think and process their ideas (Wait time)
  • Offer them a selection of views to choose from and ask them to justify their choice (Scaffolding)
  • Probe their thinking and try to tease out an opinion (Socratic dialogue)
  • Give them the opportunity to discuss their ideas with a neighbour first (Think Pair Share)

The final piece is making sure that their contributions are genuinely valued. I try to use students’ opinions as the basis for our class notes or build them into the wider class discussion, so they can see that their ideas have genuinely shaped the direction of the lesson.

What would you want every school to get right as oracy becomes part of the curriculum?

I champion oracy from two perspectives. First, I think it is genuinely good pedagogy. I think it will enable my students to become better economists. Second, I’m sold on the vision of voice equity and ensuring that everyone’s voice is heard in the classroom. These two things aren’t mutually exclusive by the way; they reinforce each other.

But keeping up with ideas around oracy can feel overwhelming. And I know that whatever oracy framework emerges over the next 12 months, it will be contested because, as we’ve seen, there is no politically neutral version. So, I just hope we can put practical guidance for the classroom right at the core.

Lastly, there’s another challenge we haven’t touched on yet: how oracy needs to work for neurodivergent students. In our relatively short journey at Headington so far, it’s become clear that this is an area that we need to think much more carefully about. I don’t pretend to have all the answers yet but if oracy is about ensuring that every student’s voice is heard, how do we make that work for students whose needs make this difficult?

[1] https://oracyeducationcommission.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Future-of-Oracy-v23-web-13.pdf
[2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/690b96bbc22e4ed8b051854d/Curriculum_and_Assessment_Review_final_report_-_Building_a_world-class_curriculum_for_all.pdf
[3] For a good primer, read Cushing, I., & Choudrey, S. (2026). An oracy framework for England’s schools: linguistic justice edition. Educational Review, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2026.2693801
[4] Sievertsen, H and S Smith (2022), ‘DP17166 Male and female voices in economics‘, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 17166. CEPR Press, Paris & London
[5] Dupas, Pascaline, Amy Handlan, Alicia Sasser Modestino, Muriel Niederle, Mateo Seré, Haoyu Sheng, Justin Wolfers, and Seminar Dynamics Collective. 2026. “Gender Differences in Economics Seminars.” American Economic Review 116 (2): 749–89
[6] https://blogs.bu.edu/ellisrp/2019/11/guidance-for-a-constructive-culture-of-exchange-plus-two-addenda/