Our Aims & Questions

Speaking skills in Britain are under sustained threat. We want to help change that. 

Oral skills are being side-lined in British state schools. Digital technology is contributing to a decline in face-to-face communication. With AI and automation already transforming the post-pandemic economy, all of this undermines a future workforce for whom communication skills will be increasingly important.

It also poses a crisis of citizenship, at a moment in which ordinary people's voices need to be heard more than ever before.

We are a group of historians and social scientists working together to discover what a deeper knowledge of the past, present and future of speech education can bring to these problems.  

Our research supports organisations lobbying for a greater role for talk in UK education.  

Launched in early 2020, we are working with primary and secondary teachers, The English Speaking Union, the English Association, Voice 21 and the All Party Parliamentary Group on Oracy and to provide new evidence for how citizenship education can be taught through a focus on speech. 

Over the next three years, we will develop these findings into teaching resources freely available on this site, and into workshops that our team will deliver across the UK.

We hosted a major conference in 2023, 'The Uses of Oracy', featuring Lord David Blunnkett and other politicians and leading academics, teachers and activists from the UK, US and Europe, to consider the future of speech education. You can watch full recordings of the event including the plenary addresses using the link above. 

Check out our introduction to the project here and our blog for the latest contributions from a wide range of contributors.