A visit to Madani Schools Federation, Leicester, joint winner of the ESU Oracy Culture Award 2021, shows us how speaking and listening is at the heart of everything it does
‘Listening’ says one student as she stands up from her chair. ‘Leadership’ chimes another, rising just as her friend takes her seat. ‘Aiming high’, ‘teamwork’, ‘problem solving’ – the contributions come thick, fast, and increasingly loudly as the class of Year 8s at Madani Girls School, Leicester, play ‘popping popcorn’ – jumping up like popping kernels of corn to give their answers as to the different skills a person might possess.
This is part of a ‘Heart for Life’ or life skills/citizenship lesson, in which oracy skills – projection, register, listening and pace, to name but a few – are explicitly taught, but spend just a couple of hours in the school and its partner boys school, with which it shares a building, and it’s clear that oracy underpins everything here. ‘We see oracy very much as part of literacy,’ says head teacher Riyaz Laher. Assistant head and oracy lead Chaitan Rajania agrees: ‘If students develop their speaking and listening skills, we know that in the end, it will also improve their reading skills, their ability to learn new vocabulary, and their writing,’ she says. ‘And holistically, we know that literacy in itself improves across every subject area.’
It wasn’t always thus. When Riyaz became head in 2017, the school was doing well enough academically, but he felt that many of the students were still lacking what he himself had lacked as a child – namely the confidence and ability to express their ideas and emotions – as well as the opportunities to do so. ‘I grew up in a council house just a stone’s throw from the school, as an only child in a single-parent family,’ he says. ‘At home we spoke Gujarati and from a very young age I was translating for my mum and filling in benefit forms for her. I was a high attainer, but as I progressed in life, I felt like I perhaps hadn’t been given the same opportunities as more affluent peers to find my voice.’
A very positive thing
Determined that his ‘students should be able to dream and believe in themselves more than I ever could’, he went to his chair of governors – who incidentally is a natural orator – proposing his idea that a focus on oracy was more important than academic outcomes. The Madani Schools are in a deprived* part of Leicester and Riyaz admits it was, initially at least, a hard sell to some parents who traditionally have very high expectations of their children. ‘But as we opened up conversations with stakeholders about what education is for and what we want for our children, a lot of them realised that they too hadn’t had those opportunities, and that of course they wanted their children to play a full part in their family life, in their communities and beyond, with the opportunities to become future leaders. And since many of our parents have English as an additional language and not all can necessarily help their children in this area, it soon became seen as a very positive thing.’
With the backing of the board and the support of school leaders, Riyaz and Chaitan then set about creating a framework for oracy in the schools that encourages students to both learn to talk and to learn through talk, via planned opportunities for oracy in lessons as well as via external platforms such as the ESU competitions and debates with other schools. Constantly evolving, this now includes everything from formal speeches from all Year 8 students; to an ‘Oracy Art Show’ in which Year 10 and 11 students present their work to younger years; and a recent live interview, in which the head girl interviewed Riyaz ‘Paxman-style’, which was streamed to all classrooms. All students have an oracy tracker in their planners, in which they can record successes and difficulties; children’s oracy is reported on three times a year, and an annual oracy day provides the chance for parents, governors, and staff and pupils from local schools to visit and see oracy in action. ‘Oracy is now embedded in most if not every aspect of school life,’ says Chaitan. ‘It’s in our strategic documents, it’s in our CPD and staff meetings, it’s even in the cafeteria at lunch, in how the students and staff interact there.’
Accelerated learning
To the relief of all concerned, the potential dip in academic performance never happened – quite the opposite, in fact. ‘Results have gone from strength to strength across academic and broader performance measures,’ says Riyaz. ‘This approach has improved the pedagogy of our staff, it has improved the learning dynamics and confidence in the classroom for the students and it’s accelerated their learning, enabling them to clarify their ideas and for staff to more easily identify misconceptions. We’ve got more energised, more articulate, more discerning, more rounded young people without any compromise on the academic side.’
There have been several other benefits, too. Through the extra curricular opportunities the schools provide, such as the ESU competitions, students are able to meet and mix with children from a host of different backgrounds. ‘They’re able to benchmark their oracy for themselves and they’re able to see that actually, they can compete and that they also belong in this space,’ says Chaitan. ‘Just as importantly, they’re able to identify areas that they need to work on much sooner than they could before. It makes for a far happier transition to college.’
Another positive has been the change that staff have seen in the students’ sense of empowerment, evidenced in part in terms of them being more able to debate their GSCE choices with their parents. There has also been an increase in student activism around subjects as diverse as environmental issues, sustainability, gender equality and, much to the children’s delight, a successful campaign calling for a longer lunch break. ‘As you’d expect in a faith school, we have high expectations, we have a strong focus on behaviour, and we generally have well-behaved students,’ says Riyaz. ‘We still have high expectations, but we now have students far more confident, happy and able to challenge the status quo and advocate for what they feel will be improvements in school and beyond.’
Many schools cite evidence of an increased ‘language gap’ after the lockdowns caused by Covid but interestingly, staff at Madani have not reported this (despite the lockdown in Leicester lasting longer than anywhere else in the country), perhaps because oracy was already so deeply embedded in the schools’ teaching practices. What they have noticed during the pandemic however, is that some students have retreated behind the safety of a facemask and are now more reluctant to engage, and that in others, listening skills have suffered. ‘Some students have not had the opportunities for as many conversations so the skill of listening and building on each other’s ideas has been affected,’ says Chaitan. ‘A lot of students are just waiting to talk – they want to say what they have on their minds, because they’ve held it in for so long.’
To ameliorate this, and to help the students process their lockdown experiences which sadly included bereavement, the school put in place a program of reintegration with oracy at its core, including plenty of opportunities for talk and discussion. For the first time, the school has also instigated specific oracy lessons for Year 7s to give them a safe space to explore some of the themes of the pandemic and current affairs. It also plans to continue with the ESU-led Discover Your Voice workshops they ran on transition days (for primary-school leavers) before the pandemic hit. ‘We knew that some of our new students may be unfamiliar with the idea of putting yourself out there and speaking and using your voice in a different way,’ says Chaitan. ‘The workshops were great fun, and an excellent way of allowing students to get to know each other and giving them a taste of what’s to come. When they did then start the school year, they were asking “when are we going to do some more discussions and debates?” They didn’t have to wait long.’
OUR ORACY AWARDS The ESU offers two oracy awards: the ESU-Rutland Oracy Culture Award, celebrating those schools placing oracy at the heart of their curriculum; and the ESU-Rutland Oracy Teacher Award, which acknowledges the exceptional contributions of the teachers who lead impactful oracy initiatives within their schools. Find out more here.
WHAT THE STUDENTS SAY
‘Our oracy activities give us the chance to interact with other people that we might not otherwise talk to. Sometimes we also have to speak to people we don’t agree with, but you find that through speaking to them, you understand them.’ Muhammad, Yr 8
‘You learn so many different things from debating – you see different sides, you hear different opinions, and you learn a lot of persuasive language, as well as strategies for addressing different audiences.’ Umair, Yr 8
‘Oracy is good for people who are quite shy, because it lets them feel more comfortable and confident.’ Nadiira, Yr 9
‘I really enjoy the Performing Shakespeare competition. It shows that oracy isn’t just speaking, it’s also acting and projecting expressions. I love seeing people’s talents on the stage.’ Taqwa, Yr 9
*Indices of Multiple Deprivation 2019
