Do children in England talk too little?

“R ESPECTFULLY, I DISAGREE ,” declares a youngster at Torriano Primary School in Camden, in north London, mustering all the gravitas that eight years on Earth can provide. Her class is studying “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” but they are also practising how to take part in a debate, by taking turns to say which character they think gets the worst deal. In a nearby classroom older children learn how to grab an audience’s attention by changing the volume and pace of their speech.

In a reception class, cross-legged moppets wax nostalgically about the things they liked best when they were young. Torriano, like a growing number of schools in England, takes pride in pumping up pupils’ “oracy”. That word, which roughly means “speaking and listening”, was coined in the 1960s by academics who believed that children’s oral language skills deserved as much attention from schools as their numeracy and literacy.

In recent years this thinking has gained currency in the Labour Party . In a speech in March, Sir Keir Starmer said he would ensure oracy is “woven into everything our children learn”. On July 19th his new government launched a review of England’s national curriculum, whose ambitions include ensuring that “every young person gets the opportunity to develop.

..speaking and listening skills particularly prized by employers”.

Its response? Early releases, blaming Tories and hints at reform Sir Keir Starmer promises a new way of running Whitehall Effort a.