5 things the speaking and listening sceptics get right (and one they don't)

Here's a question for you: what's the difference between sounding confident and communicating effectively? (Bear with me. We'll get there.)

This week, Education Secretary Lucy Powell announced that speaking and listening (oracy, if you like your jargon) will get "equal status" with reading and writing in the English curriculum, built into assessment all the way up to GCSE.

The revised curriculum is due in spring 2027, with first teaching from September 2028. Former Head Teacher and Chair of the Oracy Commission, Geoff Barton, called it ‘possibly the biggest moment for talk in schools in a generation’.

Not everyone is cheering. Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott told The Times that the curriculum and assessment review "once again creates more confusion for schools and risks reopening the hard-won debate over the importance of a knowledge-rich curriculum". That raises a question worth examining: how can speaking and listening support knowledge, rather than compete with it?

At Huthwaite, we observe commercial conversations and identify behaviours which are statistically significant in improving outcomes – in management meetings, negotiations and sales conversations. The initial research led to SPIN® Selling. That work makes an important distinction: sounding confident is not the same as asking useful questions, listening effectively and checking understanding. I have skin in this game.

But in the spirit of good communications (listen first, speak second), here are five things the sceptics get right. And one they get spectacularly wrong.

Five things the sceptics get right

1. You can't talk well about nothing. 

True. A debate between two people who know nothing is just noise (we've all sat in that meeting or been around that Pub table). Knowledge matters. But "knowledge versus talk" is a false choice. Top university tutorials comprise an hour of knowledge being tested out loud, every week. Talk is how you find out whether the knowledge is really there.

2. The timetable is already full.

Also true. Something always has to give. But speaking and listening isn't proposed as a new subject. It's to be woven into the English curriculum. Oracy already lives inside maths, science and history: explain your method, defend your hypothesis, challenge the source.

3. Assessment could become another meaningless process.

Even Geoff Barton, oracy's biggest cheerleader, warns against that. If we end up with a GCSE speech that pupils rehearse to death, we've built a box-ticking exercise. So assess the behaviour, not the performance (BTW: spoken behaviour is observable, codable and measurable. Huthwaite International have been doing exactly that in business environments since the 1970s.)

4. Teachers need time and training.

Four terms between publication and first teaching is not long. That is a fair challenge. Whether the policy succeeds will depend significantly on the time, resources and support available to schools.

5. "Confidence" isn't a skill.

If speaking and listening becomes mini-TED talks for twelve-year-olds, the cynics win. The research says the valuable part is the listening.

Huthwaite's founder, Professor Neil Rackham, studied skilled negotiators and found they asked more than twice as many questions as average performers (21.3% of their behaviour versus 9.6%). They tested understanding more than twice as often, too (9.7% versus 4.1%), and summarised more (7.5% versus 4.2%). The best people in the room spent their airtime finding out, not holding forth.

And the one they get spectacularly wrong

Where scepticism falls short is in treating speaking and listening as a nice-to-have, something best left to clubs, families and the luck of the draw. These behaviours need opportunities for practice and feedback, not an assumption that they will develop by osmosis.

Access to opportunities that develop spoken communication has never been evenly distributed. The Sutton Trust's analysis of MPs elected in 2024 provides some context on educational backgrounds, although these figures do not tell us which communication opportunities individual schools offered:

Debating societies, drama, structured discussion and demanding interviews give young people opportunities to think aloud, challenge ideas and respond under pressure. In Private and Selective schools they have long been a core part of the education experience. The value lies in the practice, not the prestige of the institution.

These experiences are valuable, but access to them should not depend on the school a child attends, the activities their family can afford or simple luck. Giving speaking and listening a clearer place in education is not about reducing the importance of knowledge. It is about helping more young people use that knowledge effectively when the moment demands it.

I should admit: I was one of the lucky few, performing in school plays at my non-selective secondary school and successfully applying to join the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain. I studied Drama as part of my degree at University. I can honestly say the skills and confidence I gained through those experiences have underpinned my career ever since. Yet more skin in the game.

Why it matters more now, not less

Here's the bit that should worry the sceptics most. AI can now draft the essay, the report, the proposal and the email, and it's getting better every month. Beyond using AI as the assistant rather than the boss, where do humans add value?

They add it in the room and on the teams call. Their value is evident in the discovery meeting where a client tells you what's really bothering them, so long as you can ask the right question. In the negotiation. In the leader’s launch of business strategy, the manager’s one to one with their team member, the difficult performance conversation and the patient consultation.

These are the moments AI can prepare you for, but can't do for you.

In our work with sales teams, the gap between average and excellent has never been about who has the best slides or the most polished proposal. It's about who asks the best questions, who listens effectively and checks they've understood.

As COVID proved when we all got to see our managers and leaders perform on Teams and Zoom calls, this is not a universal set of capabilities. Anything that enables our future team members, customer-facing staff and leaders to gain better communication skills should be accorded a priority which is long overdue.

A knowledge-rich curriculum potentially gives young people something worth saying. Giving them the chance to develop skills in speaking and listening gives them the means to say it, and to hear what comes back, in the moments that count. They're complements, not rivals. This is not a zero-sum game. A generation that is knowledge-rich and voice-poor risks entering working life without enough practice in the conversations that turn knowledge into understanding and action.

So, back to my opening question. The difference is not simply confidence, but the behaviours that help people understand one another. Working life gives us plenty of situations where these skills and behaviours are essential. Every child in every school deserves a rehearsal.