Speaking and communication are set to receive the same status as reading and writing under Lucy Powell’s planned overhaul of England’s national curriculum.
The Education Secretary said today that confident speaking will be built into a revised curriculum and assessed through GCSE examinations.
She also intends to cut the amount of academic writing required in subjects including music, PE and drama, replacing some written work with more practical forms of assessment.
Critics, however, fear the proposals could undo Conservative reforms designed to make the curriculum more rigorous, even though a Labour review last year concluded that many of those changes should remain.
Laura Trott, the shadow education secretary, said: ‘Lucy Powell seems to be tearing up the last two years as if they never happened, with a constant change of direction.
‘Blowing open 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.’
The announcement marks a departure from the approach of her predecessor, Bridget Phillipson, who had called for more limited changes to teaching.
Ms Phillipson’s major curriculum review, headed by Professor Becky Francis, concluded that much of the existing content should remain in place.
The plans come after the latest international tests conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development showed England climbing sharply up the global rankings following the Conservatives’ reforms.
Lucy Powell has announced plans to give speaking and communication skills equal status with reading and writing as part of a national curriculum overhaul
Addressing school leaders today, Ms Powell said that ‘practical skills are disappearing from practical subjects, just when the world demands the opposite.’
She added: ‘That isn’t politics or ideology; it’s a fact.’
Ms Powell also argued that the rise of artificial intelligence would make face-to-face communication among young people increasingly important—an area she said state schools have not traditionally prioritised.
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Speaking at the Confederation of School Trusts’ annual conference in Birmingham, she said: ‘With AI on the rise, we need to go harder on the skills that makes us human, like oracy.
‘That ability to articulate yourself confidently is central to success in work and in life, but for too long it’s been a marker of privilege.
‘Now it will become the right of every child—nobody left out because they can’t speak up. That’s why we’re hardwiring oracy into the revised National Curriculum.
‘And I can announce today that I will give oracy equal status to reading and writing, as a new strand of the English curriculum.’
She said Labour would work with schools and the exams regulator Ofqual to ensure that ‘oracy will light up every classroom’.
‘Both in content and in assessment, speaking, listening and communicating will be a core part of every child’s education, from primary to GCSE and beyond,’ she added.
‘And that is the oldest form of connection we can think of, building relationships by communicating.’
Government sources claimed Ms Powell would not rip up the Francis review.
As part of the overhaul, Ms Powell has already announced she wants new vocational GCSEs to sit beside academic ones.
Previously, Ms Phillipson was keen to ensure more teenagers could take art, music or drama at GCSE while retaining some pressure on them to choose humanities and languages as well.
A senior education source told The Times the announcements from Ms Powell were ‘vibes’, retrogressive and light on detail.
However, a source close to Powell said: ‘If we are serious about improving young people’s life chances, we need an education system that reaches beyond the classroom to ensure every young person leaves school ready to thrive in further study, work and life.’