Oracy in state schools

Thank you for the link.

Hmm, I see what you mean. annot check it now as I am racing out to catch a train, but I will try and look for it this evening

Thanks for the links. One was a bit confusing.
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Evidence for above:

www.jrf.org.uk/sites/default/files/jrf/migrated/files/poorer-children-education-full.pdf (jrf = Josph Rowntree Foundation, a highly regarded social policy research institute)

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/379157/Unseen_20children_20-_20access_20and_20achievement_2020_20years_20on

www.researchgate.net/publication/228363029_Poverty_and_educational_achievement_why_do_children_from_low-income_families_tend_to_do_less_well_at_school

That should do for starters.

Norah

Doodledog I don't understand this correlation between having a parent around all day and achievement or even engagement with young children. It is clear that in general children from deprived families do worse than those with better incomes.

Interesting.

Is there data to support that 'in general' notion?

Our children did well, regardless of low income.

Yes, lots of data. Sure Start was set up to mitigate the problems, and was doing well until it was stopped.

Like all generalisations there are lots of exceptions - of course there are. On the whole though, there are proven links between poverty and underachievement.

It’s lack of communication starting in the early years that contributes to poor speaking and listening skills. It doesn’t matter whether you don’t chat to your child because you’re on your device, reading a book, watching TV or anything else. Even learning to read is doubly difficult if you’ve never used/heard the words you are trying to read.

Doodledog I don't understand this correlation between having a parent around all day and achievement or even engagement with young children. It is clear that in general children from deprived families do worse than those with better incomes.

Interesting.

Is there data to support that 'in general' notion?

Our children did well, regardless of low income.

Presumably the parents being complained about for being non-stop on their phones are not at work though? How else would they be pushing little ones around in the daytime? Also, there are plenty of children from families who have had nobody in work for generations. I don't understand this correlation between having a parent around all day and achievement or even engagement with young children. It is clear that in general children from deprived families do worse than those with better incomes.

We've said all this before - being on the phone could mean anything. Chatting to a friend, trying to get an appointment for a sick child to see a doctor, arranging a business deal, booking the car in for a service - it is impossible to tell from walking past someone on the street.

nightowl

Not all parents are glued to their phones - I dislike this negativity towards today’s parents. Nurseries are not the be all and end all. And pre-school children can gain a lot from being cared for by grandparents and childminders where they receive more individual attention. It’s not a competition!

I wasn’t suggesting that it’s all parents. Nor do I think that nurseries are the be all and end all. Except for a couple of hours at a playgroup my two were at home with me all the time until they started school, so I don’t mind admitting I was a bit dubious when dd put her eldest into nursery at 9 months - the 2 younger have followed suit at 9 or 12 months.

But I’ve complete changed my ideas - they’ve all thrived and been very happy. They’ve enjoyed facilities it’d be hard to provide at home, not just indoors - so many different activities, and also e.g. forest school.

Now that house prices are so high, especially in the SE, many parents who’d never have needed to a generation or so ago, simply do have to work to pay the mortgage and other bills - one salary so often just isn’t enough any more. Personally I think I was very fortunate to be able to stay at home with mine - I enjoyed that time with them when they were so little.

Yes🙂 I thought that oracy must surely be about these three components which Stewart shows in spades.

Taking us back to the Rory Stewart lecture

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCSlNrI4nhY

So it seems that Aristotle had it back in the day.

Rhetoric made of of three components. Pathos, ethos and logos

The way to go!!

nightowl

Not all parents are glued to their phones - I dislike this negativity towards today’s parents. Nurseries are not the be all and end all. And pre-school children can gain a lot from being cared for by grandparents and childminders where they receive more individual attention. It’s not a competition!

It’s not all parents that are bad, but a significant number are failing badly, nurseries and schools can only do so much if they are not supported by parents.
There should be much more remedial action for failing children but at the end of the day it’s easier for schools to let it go and move on, until the next time.

In the past children also learnt a lot by talking to each other, even if they did not talk much to adults, and I do wonder whether now where children are on screens a lot, that it is that that is affecting their communication skills.

I do remember, a couple of years back, when eating out, watching a family at another table. parents, boy c12 years and a grandmother. They all sat down and did quick checks on their phones and then sat there for 45 minutes and the only words they said to each other were when the waiter took their order.

At our table, 2 parents, grandparents and 2 children, we were talking non-stop, except that I was somewhat abstracted watching the silence of this other family.

Not all parents are glued to their phones - I dislike this negativity towards today’s parents.
So do I. It's lazy and inaccurate. And if we're generalising, it's not as though previous generations spent ages talking to their children - we hear a lot about how children used to be outside playing for hours, and when they were indoors it was common for them to be expected to be quiet whilst the adults talked, or keep out of the way whilst the mum got on with the housework.

Not all parents are glued to their phones - I dislike this negativity towards today’s parents. Nurseries are not the be all and end all. And pre-school children can gain a lot from being cared for by grandparents and childminders where they receive more individual attention. It’s not a competition!

ronib

My 2 year old grandson is very pleased to announce that he’s going to the pub with his daddy.
It’s not what it seems….

My children wrote news about Daddy is out at the pubs or a club every night.
That wasn’t what it seemed either.

My 2 year old grandson is very pleased to announce that he’s going to the pub with his daddy.
It’s not what it seems….

Maybe one way to engage parent in encouraging their children’s Oracy or speaking skills, would be to have a banded scheme similar to a reading scheme so parents can see where their children are in terms of speaking levels.
Parents may not understand that when their child is asked, “What did you do at the weekend?” The child answers, “park” or “go park” or “I go park.” Instead of “I went to the park” or “ I went to the park with Daddy.”
Most children starting school can string together a 3, 4 or 5 word sentence with the correct tense of verb, but a frighteningly increasing number are either non-verbal (sometimes shyness, we watch them communicating with other children) or answer in 1, 2 or 3 words, often in the present tense. That’s happening more often rather than the problems with enunciation that we used to get.

Re nursery vs. staying at home as regards oral skills, TBH I should imagine a lot of children will do better in that respect at nursery, where (presumably) staff won’t be glued to their phones. Whereas I suspect that in many cases at home…

My elder Gdcs attended nursery from 9 or 12 months and were all chatterboxes, talking 19 to the dozen once their speech ‘exploded’ shortly after 2.
The youngest (3.5) still goes, and if anything talks even more than the other two ever did.

Surely this should begin in the home with parents speaking with and listening to their children?

I hope they put money into speech therapy then, which I think is impossible to get these days. My son had terrible speech problems for years and I still don’t know why. On the advice of his speech therapist he went to nursery ( they weren’t as good as they are now) ) and he hated it. Even when he was older he often spoke through me. His friends could understand him and when he started at primary school his teacher relied on his friends to translate. It used to break my heart seeing him in situations in which it was obvious that people didn’t understand him. Strangely enough, as he got older his voice was much clearer in the phone and by the time he went to uni he was fine.As for me, I was so shy that, if I’d had to speak at school I think I would have been scared to go to school.

I agree entirely about putting support into the earliest years, but I would say that there is more to oracy than that MOnica. As has been said many times on the thread, speaking and listening has been a key part of the National Curriculum for many years.
Oracy is not just about elocution or performance or debate or reading aloud, as has been suggested by other posters.
It should be about developing confidence in speaking in a range of contexts for a variety of audiences. It should also be about active listening, processing, responding and developing effective communication skills in an oral / aural context.

Bring back Surestart

It hasn't disappeared entirely so could be expanded.

Quite so, MOnica. Acquiring a vocabulary and using it are skills to be developed at home in the earliest years and it's true that many very young mothers have never been told the importance of this. Bring back Surestart.
Repeating the old-fashioned nursery rhymes can start before the age of 2. Many public libraries offer rhyme time or similar sessions and usu have ranges of quality books. School is for gaining confidence in reading aloud in front of others and learning to speak assertiveness.