Nobody measures progress in talk. Here is what it would take.

Ask a school to show you a pupil’s progress in writing and you will get a book, a sequence of pieces across a year, marked, with the improvement visible to anyone who turns the pages. Ask for the same in speaking and most schools have nothing to show. The talk happened. It was good, or it was not. It is gone.

This is not a criticism of schools. It is the sector’s own finding. The Oracy Education Commission’s 2024 report, We Need to Talk, found that spoken language has no clear progression model in most schools, and the Curriculum and Assessment Review cites exactly that gap. Teachers assess talk all day long, in their heads, in the moment. What does not exist is the equivalent of the exercise book.

What would it take? Four things, none of them complicated.

A task that is set, not just happened. “Explain the water cycle to someone who has never heard of it” is a spoken task with a shape to it, the same way a writing prompt is. It can be set in any subject by any teacher.

The work kept. A recording, a podcast, a short video, a presentation with the pupil talking over it. Kept with the pupil’s other work, not lost in a device that goes back in the cupboard.

Feedback the pupil can act on. Not a grade. Something closer to what a good teacher says in the moment: you made your point clearly, you lost the thread in the middle, try slowing down. The teacher’s judgment stays in charge; the help is in getting the first look done quickly so the teacher’s time goes on the judgment, not the admin.

Progress visible over time. The same pupil, September to July, side by side. A class. A year group. The whole school, for the leader who has to answer the question.

That is the gap, and it is the same gap for every school whatever its starting point. Closing it does not need a new subject on the timetable. It needs the exercise book for talk.

[positioning sentence]

Sources: Oracy Education Commission, We Need to Talk (2024); Curriculum and Assessment Review, page 43.