Picture a pupil in Year 5 who is bright, articulate and dreads a writing task. Give him a pen and a page and his head goes down on the desk. Ask him to explain the same thing out loud and you get two clear paragraphs with a joke in the middle. Every school has this child. Most schools have a lot of them.
Now picture the homework he gets. A worksheet, or an upload to a classroom platform, or a booklet. Work that goes into a markbook and is never seen again, by him or by anyone else. He does the minimum, or he does not do it, and the gap between what he knows and what he can show gets wider.
What if the homework was: record yourself explaining it. Two minutes, phone or tablet, in your own words. It goes to your teacher, who hears it and gives you a quick response. Your class can see it too, inside a closed space where the only audience is people who know you. No likes, no strangers, no algorithm deciding who sees what. Just the work and the people it is for.
For the pupil, that is homework he will actually do, and it plays to what he is good at while he builds what he is not. For the teacher, it is work that does not die in a markbook: it is heard, responded to, kept, and it can be shared and celebrated. And the first pass of listening and responding can be helped, so the teacher’s time goes where it matters.
For a school, this is inclusion in practice. The pupils who struggle with writing are very often the pupils a school is most accountable for. Giving them a way to show what they know, and building their confidence in doing so, is not an add-on. It is the job.
Homework is the door. It is the easiest place to start because it changes nothing about the timetable. But the same idea works in a lesson, in a club, in a PE challenge, in drama, in a careers task. Once a school has the habit of setting spoken work and keeping it, it runs through the whole day.
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Sources: Curriculum and Assessment Review (oracy as speaking, listening and communication); EEF oral language interventions; DfE Enrichment Framework.