There is a lot of conversation in education right now about oracy.
If you haven’t come across the word before, it simply means the ability to speak and listen effectively – to articulate your thoughts, ask good questions, hold a conversation, and express what you know with confidence.
The Oracy Education Commission published a report last year calling for it to be treated as the fourth ‘R’ – alongside reading, writing and arithmetic. Keir Starmer has pledged to make it a priority in schools. It’s now written into the terms of reference for the national Curriculum and Assessment Review.
In other words, the ability to speak well is finally being taken seriously at a policy level. But for anyone who has spent time in classrooms, this isn’t news. It’s something good teachers have understood for years.
And it’s something that sits at the heart of how we work at Let’s Pass for our Havering students.
Why this matters for your Essex based teenager right now
Think about what your child is actually being asked to do in their GCSE English Literature exam. They need to construct an argument, use evidence, and express ideas in a way that communicates clearly to a marker. Those are oracy skills, applied in writing.
In Science, they are expected to explain processes, justify conclusions, and compare methods. In Maths, they need to show reasoning. Even the way a student approaches a problem – talking through it, asking the right questions – depends on whether they have been taught to think out loud.
The research is clear: students who are given regular, structured opportunities to talk about their learning understand it more deeply, remember it better, and perform more confidently under exam pressure.
Now ask yourself: when was the last time your teenager was asked to explain their thinking to another person in a room?
The problem with 1-1 tuition – and why small groups do something different
This is something I want to address directly, because I hear it regularly from parents.
“Would my child not get more from a 1-1 session?”
It’s a fair question. 1-1 tuition has its place. But it has one significant limitation that is rarely talked about: it removes the peer dynamic entirely.
In a 1-1 session, the student talks to an adult. The adult explains. The student listens, or attempts a question, and the adult responds. It can be highly efficient for filling gaps in knowledge. But it does not build the skill of thinking alongside other people, of hearing someone else’s explanation and having to evaluate it, or of having to articulate your own understanding clearly enough that it makes sense to a peer.
Those are exactly the oracy skills the Oracy Education Commission is calling for. And they only develop in a group.
In a Let’s Pass small group session – four to eight students, grouped by ability – something different happens. Students have to explain their thinking. They hear how other students approach the same problem. They get asked questions, not just by the teacher, but implicitly by the group. They have to keep up, speak up, and stay engaged. That is what builds confidence – not just in the subject, but in themselves.
The Upminster parent who brings her daughter to us because she goes quiet in class and won’t put her hand up? By the end of the year, she is answering in her session without being asked. That is oracy. That is the thing that is hard to measure and impossible to fake.
What confident speaking does for exam performance
There is a direct link between a student’s ability to verbalise their understanding and their ability to write it down clearly. When students can explain a concept out loud – to a peer, to a teacher, to the group – they have genuinely understood it. When they can only silently complete a worksheet, they may be following a process they don’t fully own.
This is why at Let’s Pass our sessions are not silent study sessions. They are structured, expert-led, and academically rigorous – but they involve discussion, explanation, and the kind of back-and-forth that builds real understanding.
Grades matter. We work hard to help students achieve them. But the confident student who walks into that exam hall knowing they can explain their reasoning is a different proposition to one who has memorised answers in isolation.
How to spot whether your child is developing oracy at school
A few things worth noticing:
- Can your child explain what they’re studying in a subject, not just what they’re doing?
- When they get something wrong, can they tell you why they got it wrong?
- Do they ask questions in class, or do they wait to be spoken to?
- After an exam, can they talk you through what they found hard?
If the answer to most of these is no, that is not a reflection of intelligence. It is a reflection of how much structured practice they have had at thinking and speaking out loud. It is also something that changes with the right support and the right environment.
If you want to know more about how Let’s Pass works and whether it might be right for your child, you can get in touch using the contact form or message us on WhatsApp. We will always be honest with you about whether we are a good fit.
