Boys and teachers from both the Prep and Upper School are celebrating after learning they have been recognised with a ‘highly commended’ in this year’s English-Speaking Union’s Oracy Culture Awards.
The ESU Oracy Culture Award is a prize that recognises the efforts and initiatives that schools put forward to cultivate a long-term oracy culture within their school community. Our Head of English, Mr Nick Hopton, knew we had “lots to celebrate” after a packed year of activities, competitions and co-curricular activity aimed to encourage oracy within the school.
The school’s well-established Debating Society, which meets weekly and enters several competitions each year, led Bedford School to becoming an ESU Oracy Affiliated School – an affiliation of which we are extremely proud. Boys have enjoyed participating in friendly debates with other schools; one held in June 2022 at Oundle School involved eight of our boys who were brand new to debating, demonstrating the schools ‘everybody in’ ethos, which is at the heart of our oracy culture.
Boys have also enjoyed testing their debating skills further afield and participated in competitions such as the Mace, Churchill, ESU Primary Public Speaking, the national ARTiculation competition and the Bedfordshire Festival of Music, Speech and Drama – to name just a few.
There are numerous opportunities across school for boys of all ages to speak in public, a skill which helps boys to express themselves clearly, build confidence and become proficient at communicating orally. Assemblies and Chapel addresses have proved to be superb platform, and recently boys have spoken on topics as varied as the climate emergency, Chinese festivals, Russian religious celebrations, homosexuality and space exploration.
Additionally, our thriving Speech and Drama department has begun offering LAMDA public speaking exams, which give boys from the Remove Form to the Upper Sixth Form the chance to gain UCAS points while honing and developing their skills.
The foundation of any good culture is woven into the fabric of the school day and we strongly believe that oracy supports effective learning as well as being a necessary skillset for future studies, careers and community engagement. As such, oracy activities are being used frequently across the whole school curriculum and all subject disciplines.
Mr Hopton explained, “As a school, we believe that fostering the skills of speaking and listening promotes wellbeing, confidence, mutual respect, academic success and readiness for anything the future throws at our boys. The English-Speaking Union has, for many years, been a champion and developer of pupils’ voices. For them to acknowledge the excellent oracy culture at Bedford School makes me immensely proud.”