Breaking the class ceiling: are Starmer’s speaking lessons the answer?

Keir Starmer has promised to smash the “class ceiling” by boosting education for poorer children.

In a speech yesterday, the Labour leader pledged to improve children’s speaking skills, or “oracy”, as part of a drive to break down class barriers to opportunity, reported the BBC.

“The inability to speak fluently is one of the biggest barriers to opportunity,” said Starmer. Being able to articulate ideas is key to “getting on and thriving in life”, he said, adding that “children with poor language skills at the age of five are six times less likely to reach the expected standard of English at 11”, said The Times.

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But can his plan lead to meaningful social change?

‘Promising ideas’

Starmer’s speech “offers promising ideas” on how to “break the class ceiling”, said Andrew Marr on LBC.

“Oracy” means “fluent, grammatical, self-confident speaking, the kind of smooth ease in front of an audience that an Old Etonian would barely notice they have”, explained Marr. But it’s something that those “from less privileged backgrounds, struggle with all their lives”.

In a letter to The Times, former head teacher Mark Steed wrote that Starmer is “right to emphasise the importance of oracy in the school curriculum”.

“Having introduced lessons leading to public-speaking qualifications in UK independent schools and British schools overseas”, Steed has “seen the impact on teenagers’ confidence and articulacy”.

Annabel Thomas MacGregor, director of the English-Speaking Union, told the i news site that private schools have recognised the benefits of oracy “for a really long time,” but “we could really see this replicated across the state sector”.

There was also support from a former Labour spin doctor. “I am delighted that a commitment to teaching of oracy in schools is included as part of Labour plans for education,” tweeted Alastair Campbell, because “a confident nation breeds confident kids”.

‘Depressingly hard’

However, others focused on the steepness of the hill Starmer’s policy would have to climb, particularly after the austerity programme the coalition government began in 2010.

“Of course this doesn’t herald the shattering of class as we know it,” wrote Polly Toynbee for The Guardian.

Starmer’s missions “indicate the direction of travel and the party’s intent”, she added, “but every endeavour reminds us how depressingly hard it will be just to get back to the standards of 2010, let alone to progress”.

Another commentator argued that substance was as important as style. There’s “no point in speaking well unless you have something worthwhile to say”, Lindsay Paterson, professor of education policy at Edinburgh University, told The Herald.

If children are “hungry”, he continued, and if they “do not have access to books at home, if their internet connection is unreliable, if they are not stimulated by conversation at home”, then “no amount of training in public speaking will help them to succeed”.

Then there is the question of how long the changes will take to be felt. It will “probably take 10 years” to “train all the teachers to help the children that have got lifelong challenges and to recruit enough specialist speech and language therapists”, Jane Harris, chief executive of charity Speech and Language UK, told i news.