It’s that time of the year again: you’ve asked your students to plan a presentation, covering what they have learned in the first half term’s unit of work.

“Please do not just read your PowerPoint slides or cue cards,” you tell them. “Try to engage with the class and put your own spin on things.”

This feels like sound advice - and yet students have never really been taught how to engage a class. What’s more, there is no clear mark scheme for assessing presentations in your school and students know they can get away with minimal effort. So they do.  

If this sounds familiar, your school might have fallen into the trap of “token oracy”. It’s not that debating or public speaking never happens but it is rare and no one’s real priority.

Why is ‘token oracy’ common?

Most subjects are examined through writing, not speech, so it’s not surprising that schools rarely focus on oracy. 

Couple that with the reality that many teachers are unsure how to teach public speaking - indeed, many are under-confident in their own public speaking abilities - and, of course, we have relegated oracy to a tick-box exercise.

Why is token oracy so harmful?

If you do something very rarely, having not been taught it, you are usually not great at it. If, once a year, students were asked to sing in public, having not been taught how, we would have to endure some ear-wrenching awkwardness. 

Of course, there would be some naturally talented students who would light up the room, but the average student would be terrified, hate the experience, think that singing is impossible for them and associate singing with nerves and misery.

This is what happens with oracy. Small amounts of public speaking might be more harmful than none, as sporadic oracy leads to negative associations with speaking, debate and presenting, which hampers discussion in all areas.

Read more:

• What’s the evidence for a focus on oracy?
• Can oracy make your teaching more inclusive?
• Tes focus on... Oracy

Being able to communicate your thoughts clearly to a room full of people is an invaluable life skill, but one we are too often not giving our students. Unfortunately, this is especially the case for state schools, which widens the inequality gap.

So, what can be done? How can schools facilitate meaningful oracy?

1. Teach it

We might hope that oracy is “caught, not taught” but the evidence is clear: most pupils are not confident public speakers. According to a report from Voice 21, teachers believe that just 21 per cent of learners are confident delivering a presentation to their class. 

Embedding lessons specifically dedicated to these skills into the timetable is crucial. This should be done as early as possible; a weekly class in Year 7 for just one term can reap enormous benefits and can be taught by any willing teacher.

Focus on dispelling myths about speaking, such as that eye contact is paramount, we should use big words to sound smart and body language matters. Address students’ bad habits (such as reading aloud and not rehearsing) and, most of all, encourage them to sound like themselves.

The only difference between them speaking and public speaking should be the number of people in the room. 

Practice is 80 to 90 per cent of any good public speaking class. If students are given fun public speaking games, interesting debates and the encouragement that they are not expected to perform, just speak as themselves, we are setting them up for a fantastic school experience.  

2. Set clear expectations

Every school should have a basic but consistent guide on what is expected of students in presentations, across subjects.

For example, students should not read an essay aloud, should sound like themselves and should have rehearsed a few times. 

PowerPoint presentations and notes should have a low - and strict - word count. 

Students should be held to these standards and told to re-do their presentation if need be. You can’t get out of a maths test through nerves; nor should you be excused from a presentation.

3. Encourage debating

Take advantage of the incredible pedagogical tool that is debating. Children love to argue. 
Schools should have a consistent and easy debate format for all subjects to use, and regularly employ debates to engage students.

For example, in physics classes students could be sorted into groups and assigned a type of renewable energy to advocate for. In English students can debate which character was most responsible for Eva Smith’s death in An Inspector Calls.

Schools that can should invest in weekly lunchtime debate clubs, and remuneration should be given to the teacher willing to take on such a project.

I know that budgets are squeezed, but meaningful oracy is cheap and effective compared with other schemes designed to improve attainment and engagement.
 
Ultimately, time spent on token oracy is time wasted. Wheeling out a couple of bright students for a debate competition once a year, or to run a termly assembly on a topical issue, simply isn’t enough. 

Invest a little more for a huge return. Giving all students the ability to speak publicly, to do so well and to enjoy it, is life-changing for them.

Most importantly, you will never again have to sit through an entire hour of read-aloud PowerPoint presentations. That alone should be encouragement enough.

Michael Hepburn is director of Debate Hub at South Hampstead High School