Oracy cannot be a bolt-on, and cannot be the exclusive domain of the English department, if you wish for it to have meaning and be a significant part of the character development of your pupils.

Oracy strategies are not even about schoolwide in-lesson pedagogy; more 'talk for learning' will not achieve what you want, if what you want is confident young people who express themselves well verbally, with confidence, and in appropriate registers.

Good oracy is found outside of lesson time, with all adults in a school ensuring that they have a few good conversations with students every day on break duties, before school and after school. Those conversations should not be limited to subject transactions.

If you greet a student and they mumble a response or ignore you entirely, you haven't yet achieved a good oracy culture. You need to explicitly teach eye-contact, handshakes, strong voice; and you need to have clarity as to why this is important.

This should not be considered in the 'SLANT or sanction' manner, and we need to understand that some students will find it more difficult than others. But we should also be aware that many children can go a week or more without a conversation with an adult.

Those conversations with adults, and with authority figures, that are respectful, friendly, warm, and situationally appropriate, are some of the most important capital we can confer on young people.

On the trad side of education we can often, and I'm often guilty of this, have one way conversations in which we talk and they listen respectfully; on the prog side there is often a tendency to create opportunities for them to talk to peers but not really to adults.

An oracy culture is one where they talk to us, and we have actual conversations, in which seniority and register is understood but is a part of communication, not a barrier to it.