Oracy has drifted in and out of fashion since Andrew Wilkinson coined the term in 1965, but Professor Becky Francis’ Curriculum and Assessment Review has put it firmly back on the agenda.

The message is clear: our students need spoken language to be taken as seriously as reading and writing. Yet there is still no consistent progression model across subjects that schools can use to track progress.

With the national oracy framework not due until 2027, waiting does not seems a sensible option. At our school we’ve already begun strengthening our practice, using the Cambridge Oracy Skills Framework (OSF).

Tracking progress in oracy

The OSF helped us by breaking spoken language down into clear components, giving us a shared way to identify effective talk. We started in key stage 3 history, focusing on early confidence skills such as speaking clearly and organising ideas.

In practice, this meant first reframing what were originally written descriptive and analytical tasks as oracy activities.

With this, though, came another question: how can we accurately record oracy, offer feedback and monitor progression?

The answer was seemingly easy - film students and use this to guide feedback. Immediately, however, we encountered questions: how long should a video be? Where do you film? Where do you store the video? What devices are best to use?

Over the past four months we’ve worked through this list, and we’ve found these videos a highly useful way of tracking progress.

The practical issues

Firstly, the tasks we give students are designed to ensure that there is scope to show analysis, judgement and cause and effect, such as explaining the causes of the Reformation or the Battle of the Somme.

They do this within a time frame of three minutes, which is long enough to show structured thinking but short enough for students to stay focused rather than performative.

We model what spontaneous responses look like across the cumulative sequence of description, analysis and evaluation, making it clear that we expect natural speech rather than something rehearsed, and we also point out that we notice when they try to read from a script.

For the filming itself, we found the classroom too noisy - and too public - and so we use other rooms so that audio is clear.

The filming is done on existing laptops and iPads so there has been no need for extra financial outlay, and the filming itself is straightforward, too - simply getting their head in shot and them talking to the camera to keep things quick and easy for all involved.

Finally, we ensured from the start that all videos were filmed in alignment with all compliant policies - both school and wider legal policies, including UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

This means videos are stored on school‑owned, encrypted devices, uploaded only to restricted platforms, and never shared publicly.

How digital video has sharpened our practice

Once we have the videos, we share them with students for them to watch, and many are already noticing how their speaking is changing and what they need to work on.

For example, the recordings often highlight two recurring issues: colloquial language slipping into formal tasks, and the additional challenges faced by learners with weaker English proficiency.

Meanwhile, some of our quiet and shy students, including girls who might previously have been overshadowed, have finally found a way to show what they can do, and recording privately feels far less daunting than addressing the whole class.

The oracy tasks have enriched our classroom practice by giving students more varied ways to think and explain their ideas, which has really suited those who prefer to verbalise their thinking.

Our quieter students have shown the most striking change, speaking far more confidently when recording alone or in pairs, and the acts of videoing their responses and receiving feedback have been crucial because it feels “real” and equal in status to written work.

We have rather stumbled upon how powerful that sense of status can be, and it has helped us to get to know our students on a deeper level.

However, we deliberately avoid giving marks for oracy because we want students to focus on improving their performance rather than accumulating grades, and there are already enough summative assessments.

Instead, we reassure students that imperfect talk is normal and often a sign of real thinking. To this point, we are definitely seeing students grow more confident in academic talk and more deliberate in how they communicate.

Benefits for teachers

Reviewing spoken work closely has also made it easier to target teaching and to model effective communication, with staff filming short examples of descriptive, analytical and evaluative talk for students to watch at their own pace.

This has fed directly into CPD, moderation and shared reflection, and watching examples together in departmental meetings has sharpened our sense of what different types of talk should sound like.

The approach is helping us to spot cohort‑level patterns and refine our scaffolding so that classroom talk develops more consistently.

We are not pretending to be the finished article, but these routines are prompting us to ask sharper questions about how we can continue improving students’ oral skills.

David Tuck is head of history and politics at Harrow International School Hong Kong

For essential weekly intelligence on the international schools sector, sign up for the Tes International newsletter