Education

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Quick summary: The government is introducing a new oracy framework for schools in England, and speaking and listening will have equal status with reading and writing in the revised national curriculum from September 2028. That matters because oracy builds young people’s confidence and self-esteem, and their chances in work and life. Make (Good) Trouble has spent years helping young people find their voice, and we’re building on our work to help them have their say, to network and developing agency to shape their futures.

Earlier this month, the Education Secretary announced that speaking and listening will have equal status with reading and writing in England’s revised national curriculum. A new national oracy framework will sit at the heart of that change.

At Make (Good) Trouble, we’ve been saying this for years. Being able to speak up, and to be properly listened to, shouldn’t be an extra for young people. It’s at the root of their confidence, their self-esteem and their chances in the world of work.

So we’re delighted. And we want to use this moment to tell you what we’ve learned, and where we’re heading next.

What is the oracy framework?

The oracy framework is new Department for Education guidance for schools in England on teaching speaking and listening. There will be a primary oracy framework and a combined oracy, reading and writing framework for secondary schools, alongside the revised national curriculum from September 2028.

Oracy is the ability to speak and listen well: putting your ideas into words, making sense of things through talk, and engaging with other people. The government wants every child in England to leave school able to do this with confidence.

Here’s what’s been announced so far:

  • A new primary oracy framework. Guidance to help primary teachers make sure children are confident speakers and listeners by the end of Key Stage 2.
  • A combined secondary framework bringing oracy, reading and writing together, so speaking and listening are built into every subject, not just English.
  • Practical support for teachers. Tips, tried-and-tested strategies and examples of what works, building on the existing reading and writing frameworks.
  • Equal status in the curriculum. On 15 October 2026, Education Secretary Lucy Powell told school trust leaders in Birmingham that oracy will become a brand-new strand of the English curriculum, with spoken language a core part of curriculum and assessment up to GCSE.
  • A place in inspection. Ofsted has confirmed that oracy now features in its inspection framework.

The commitment came out of the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review, which made an oracy framework its first recommendation in November 2025. That followed the Oracy Commission’s 2024 report, We Need to Talk, which called for oracy to be treated as a ‘fourth R’. The revised curriculum is due for first teaching from September 2028, and the full framework is still to be published.

How does oracy affect life chances?

Strong speaking and listening skills are linked to better results at school, better job prospects and greater social mobility. But access to them is unequal.

The Education Secretary argued that for too long, oracy has been ‘a marker of privilege’. Some young people get endless chances to debate, present and perform. Many don’t. 

That gap shapes life chances. The English-Speaking Union’s Why Oracy Matters report found good spoken language skills are crucial to social mobility, school attainment and later success in education and work. And the Oracy APPG’s Speak for Change inquiry found unemployed young people were almost twice as likely as their peers to feel school hadn’t given them the speaking skills they needed for later life.

Why does oracy matter for young people?

Oracy is often talked about as a skill for learning. It is. But in our experience, it’s about much more than that. It’s about whether a young person believes their voice counts.

It builds confidence and self-esteem. When a young person says something out loud and someone really listens, it changes how they see themselves. Do that often enough and it becomes part of who they are. Go without it, and staying quiet becomes a habit that’s hard to break.

It opens doors to work. Interviews, networking, asking for help, pitching an idea, speaking up in a meeting. So much of getting on at work comes down to talk. Yet only four in ten 8 to 18-year-olds told the National Literacy Trust they feel good at speaking in front of an audience. And in the Institute of Student Employers’ 2025 survey, 42% of employers said school and college leavers fell short on verbal communication, up from 22% two years earlier.

It gives young people agency. Being able to put your case, ask the awkward question, or challenge a decision that affects you is how young people shape their own lives. It’s also how they help shape the services, schools and communities around them.

As we wrote recently in Young people aren’t the problem, this isn’t a failing in young people. Many of the places where they used to practise, from Saturday jobs to youth clubs to drama lessons, have shrunk or disappeared. Confidence comes from practice, and practice needs opportunity.

Two work experience students at Wakehurst interviewing each other to record a podcast about their week.

How can young people build confidence in speaking up?

Young people build speaking confidence through practice: real tasks, in a safe space, with adults who take them seriously. That’s what we’ve learned from years of helping young people find their voice.

Giving young people a voice is what Make (Good) Trouble was set up to do. Everything we make, we co-produce with young people, so they speak for themselves rather than being spoken for. Along the way, oracy has been at the heart of our work, even when we didn’t call it that.

The skills young people gain with us are recognised through RSA Cities of Learning digital badges, with more than 150 awarded so far.

One parent told us their son, who had found life immensely difficult, had become ‘more confident, more positive, dealing with tricky situations better’. That’s what finding your voice looks like.

Beyond the classroom: what’s next for Make (Good) Trouble

The oracy framework is a big step, and we’ll be cheering schools on. But it won’t be in classrooms until 2028. And young people need chances to be heard in lots of places, not just lessons: in youth clubs, at work, in their communities and in the decisions made about them.

That’s where we come in. Over the coming months, we’ll be building on our work to help young people:

  • Have a say. Speaking up about the things that matter to them, and being listened to by the people and organisations who make decisions.
  • Network with confidence. Walking into a room of strangers, introducing themselves, and building the contacts that too often depend on who your parents know.
  • Take the lead. Developing the agency to shape their own futures, and to bring about the change they want to see.

This is already part of the workshops we offer. Take a look at our Media Training Workshops and Creative Workshops. We’re also building an oracy programme for young people. More on this soon! In the meantime, we’d love to hear from schools, charities, youth services, employers and funders who want to be part of what’s next.

Oracy framework FAQs

When will the oracy framework be published?

The Department for Education hasn’t confirmed a publication date yet. The revised national curriculum, including the new oracy frameworks, is due for first teaching in schools from September 2028.

Is oracy now part of the national curriculum?

It will be. On 15 October 2026, Education Secretary Lucy Powell announced that oracy will become a new strand of the English curriculum, with equal status to reading and writing. Ofsted already looks at oracy in school inspections.

What’s the difference between oracy and public speaking?

Public speaking is one part of oracy. Oracy also covers listening, discussion, explaining your thinking and talking with others in everyday situations, from a classroom debate to a job interview.

Does oracy only happen in schools?

No. Young people build speaking and listening skills in youth clubs, part-time jobs, drama, volunteering and community projects. Many of those opportunities have shrunk, so work outside school matters too.

How can my organisation work with Make (Good) Trouble?

We run media training, creative and podcast workshops, and youth voice research for schools, charities, councils and employers. Get in touch

What you can do…

If you work with young people and want them to feel confident speaking up, whether that’s in front of a journalist, an interview panel or a room full of decision-makers, get in touch. We’d love to hear what they need.

And if you think young people deserve to be heard, please share this post.

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In November 1920, thousands of women wrote to the government asking to join the ceremony at Westminster Abbey for the Unknown Warrior. Each of them was convinced that he was her son.

It’s a story that stops you in your tracks. It’s also, I expect, one you never heard at school. Our young team found it while asking a simple question: what did the First World War do to women’s mental health?

With Remembrance Sunday 2026 on 8 November and Armistice Day on Wednesday 11 November, many of you will be planning lessons, assemblies and tutor time right now. If you’d like to take a different angle this year, or start something bigger with your students, we have just the thing. We Are Poppy is a free set of Remembrance resources for secondary schools, exploring how the First World War affected women’s mental health.

What is the We Are Poppy project?

We Are Poppy explores how the First World War affected women’s mental health. It was developed in 2020 by young people aged 14 to 19 from Hove Park School, the East Sussex Youth Cabinet and the Make (Good) Trouble team, with support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Our team knew about soldiers and shellshock, but the women’s side of the story was new to them. As Amelie, 14, told us, “it hadn’t even occurred to me that the women would get shellshock”.

Then the pandemic lockdown hit, and planned archive visits were cancelled. So the team went digging online instead. They found Mabel Lethbridge, a 17-year-old munitions worker who lost a leg in a factory explosion. They read about nurses at the front who were simply sent home when they showed signs of what we’d now call PTSD.

To make sense of it all, they invented Poppy, a fictional young woman living through the war. Imagining her life helped them connect with the real women they were reading about. It all came together in Dear Poppy, a podcast that imagines a conversation between today’s teenagers and the young women of 1914-18 – women who fought, nursed and kept the home fires burning. It was broadcast on BBC Radio Sussex and BBC Radio Surrey on Remembrance Sunday 2020.

Listen to the We Are Poppy podcast

What resources are available for schools?

Everything lives on wearepoppy.org, so you can dip in for one lesson or use the lot. It also works well for Women’s History Month or Mental Health Awareness Week.

A great place to start is the 29-minute podcast, which mixes letters, diaries, medical records and expert interviews. You’ll also find full interviews with historian Professor Lucy Noakes, historian and therapist Denise Poynter, and trauma therapist Darren Abrahams.

For classroom planning, download our Schools Pack. It’s free to download, aimed at secondary-age students and has five lessons:

  1. Introduction and podcast: meet the project and listen to Dear Poppy.
  2. Life in the First World War: explore women’s lives through seven real stories.
  3. Shining a light on mental health: look at trauma and shellshock, then and now.
  4. Recreating Poppy in the classroom: build a character and write letters across time.
  5. Make your own podcast: turn the research into audio.

A quick note before you start: the material covers trauma, loss and serious injury, and one section of student writing touches on sexual assault and harassment. It’s worth reading and listening first.

How to create a student research podcast about WW1

This is the bit we’re most excited about, because the site gives you what you need for students to make their own version. You don’t need a studio, either. Our team made Dear Poppy entirely remotely, recording on mobile phones and over video calls.

Here’s one way to do it:

  1. Create your Poppy. Students decide who she is, where she lives and what she did during the war, using our Poppy worksheet.
  2. Do the research. Our resources page points to the Imperial War Museum, The National Archives, The British Newspaper Archive and nurses’ diaries online. Local archives are great for finding women from your own area.
  3. Write to Poppy. Students write a letter to Poppy, then reply in her voice. This activity really fired up our team, and it’s a lovely standalone task if you only have one lesson.
  4. Shape the story. Start with the audience, then plan a beginning, middle and end. It could be a drama, a series of interviews, a group conversation or a mix.
  5. Record it. Students can interview each other, a historian or a relative with a family story, then add their own sound effects. Our podcast guide has tips on interviewing and recording, plus links to sound effect libraries.

The sound effects can be a highlight. When our sound editor, Alvy Vincent, needed the noise of injured men on a hospital ward, the answer was some home-recorded groaning, tucked quietly into the background. It seems a bit silly, but it’s surprisingly effective!

Teen in First World War and modern dress, from the photoshoot for We Are Poppy - commemorating women in WW1

Share your students’ work

Jane Griffin, the retired teacher who worked with our team, says one of the joys of teaching is offering “a germ of an idea” and watching students take it somewhere you never imagined. That’s exactly what happened with Poppy.

So this Remembrance, why not ask your students who their Poppy might be? Have a look around wearepoppy.org, download the Schools Pack (PDF) and see where it takes you.

If you do make something, please get in touch. We’d love to feature your students’ work on the website. And if you’d like a hand, we also run creative and media workshops for young people.

Frequently asked questions

Who are the We Are Poppy resources for?

The Schools Pack is aimed at secondary-age students, and the website is open to anyone who wants to explore women’s experiences of the First World War.

Do you need special equipment to make a podcast?

No. Our team recorded on mobile phones and over video calls, then edited the audio together with software. Headphones help you check the sound as you record, and a furry windshield is useful outdoors.

Can students use the resources outside Remembrance?

Yes. The lessons explore women’s history, mental health and storytelling, so they work at any time of year.

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Parenting teenagers can feel like you’re constantly firefighting – school anxiety, exam stress, messy bedrooms, emotional blow-ups – we want to say this clearly:

You’re not failing. This stage really is tough.

At Make (Good) Trouble, one thing we hear again and again from parents is:
“I don’t know what’s normal anymore, and I don’t know if I’m handling this right.”

You’re not alone in that feeling.

In this Q&A, Daisy Cresswell spoke with psychotherapist Donna Peters-Lamb about young people’s mental health, parenting teenagers – and what genuinely helps families day to day. Here are the most useful takeaways

When school feels like too much

For many families, anxiety shows up as the Monday morning battle – tears, shutdown, refusal, or a child who simply can’t get out of the door.

One reassuring truth: anxiety rarely comes out of nowhere. It builds quietly over time and is often a response to feeling overwhelmed or unsafe.

What helps (without making it worse)

Get curious, not alarmed
Instead of focusing only on “school is the problem”, try gently exploring:

  • When did this start?
  • What feels hardest?
  • When does school feel even a little bit easier?

Sometimes the clue to moving forward is hidden in the detail.

Bring school in early
You don’t need to wait for things to fall apart. A discreet conversation with a tutor or Head of Year can help you understand what’s really going on – friendships, learning pressure, or moments where your child is coping better than you realise.

Prepare before pressure hits
Anxious brains hate uncertainty. Simple preparation can make a big difference:

  • Pack school bags on Friday
  • Check homework earlier in the weekend
  • Talk through the week ahead

Less last-minute stress = calmer mornings.

Tools that actually calm anxiety

Anxiety lives in the body, not just in thoughts. These tools help switch off the stress response – and teenagers (and parents) can use them anywhere.

Breathing (simple and invisible)

  • 3–4–5 breathing: in for 3, hold for 4, out for 5
  • Or any breathing where the out-breath is longer than the in-breath

This tells the nervous system it’s safe to calm down.

Grounding

Encourage your teen to:

  • Feel their feet flat on the floor
  • Notice colours, sounds, or objects around them
  • Focus attention outward instead of inward

These techniques are subtle, practical, and effective anywhere – in classrooms, 

“They don’t listen to me”: Mess, conflict and power struggles

If you’re endlessly asking for dirty washing, mugs and plates from their room – and getting nowhere – you’re not alone.

A helpful reframe: this is rarely about disrespect. Teenagers genuinely don’t notice mess in the way adults do.

What helps families move forward

Say it once – properly
Instead of repeatedly asking the same question over and over again, have one calm conversation about:

  • What matters to you
  • What you expect
  • What will happen if it doesn’t change

Start small
Ask for one thing at a time:

  • This week: dirty clothes in the basket
  • Next step: cups and bowls returned

Small steps are more achievable – and more likely to stick.

Consequences, not punishments
Be clear and upfront:

“If this doesn’t happen, this is what will follow. I don’t want that – but it’s your choice.”

This removes power struggles and reduces emotional blow-ups.

Exam stress and the harsh inner critic

Even when exams are over, many young people stay stuck in worry – replaying papers and assuming the worst.

Psychotherapist Donna Peters-Lamb shared a powerful idea from psychologist Martin Seligman, known as the Three Ps.

When stressed, young people often make worries:

  • Personal: “This proves I’m a failure”
  • Pervasive: “I mess everything up”
  • Permanent: “I’ll always be like this”

📚 Read this: Learned Optimism: How to change your mind and your life by Martin Seligman

How parents can help

Rather than jumping in with “You’ll be fine”, try gently challenging certainty:

  • “You don’t actually know that yet.”
  • “That’s a thought, not a fact.”
  • “Even if this didn’t go how you hoped, there are other paths.”

This isn’t fake positivity. It’s helping young people build flexible thinking – a key life skill.

A few things to remember about parenting teenagers

  • Teen brains are still under construction
  • Behaviour is often communication
  • Anxiety needs calming, not fixing
  • Routines, sleep and connection matter more than lectures
  • Your stress level affects your child more than you realise

And most importantly:

Be kind to yourself.
Parenting teenagers is one of the hardest, most emotionally demanding jobs there is – and you don’t have to do it perfectly to do it well.

At Make Good Trouble, we exist to support parents and carers too. You don’t have to hold all of this on your own.

Want support that feels human?

If this resonates, you might find it helpful to:

  • Sign up for our Raising Teens workshop pilot
  • Follow us for practical tools and honest conversations
  • Share this post with another parent who might need it

💛 You’re not alone. And you’re doing better than you think.

Huge thanks to Donna for her time and invaluable advice. You can find out more about her work at Make Sense Psychotherapy. This programme was supported by the Sussex Care Partnership, Brighton & Hove City Council.

Watch the whole conversation here:

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Orchids, Poo Sprinkles and Us…

That’s the name of one of the podcasts created by work experience students detailing their experiences of their placement week at the glorious botanic garden, Wakehurst, in Sussex, part of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. So if you’re interested in finding out what poo sprinkles are, give them a listen (below)!

They created the podcasts on the final day of their placement with Make (Good) Trouble. Our one-day workshop is designed to help young people to make sense of their work placements, articulate what they’ve learnt, and sharpen their communication, and listening skills. It also helps them to prepare for future job interviews. 

We were invited to devise and deliver a workshop that encourages young people to think about all the things they have learnt on their placement, and to disseminate that into a podcast and written piece for their CV. We also included training in interview techniques and how to use audio recording equipment, which they loved! The groups recorded interviews with each other, describing their week, as well as sound effects from the gardens to help build an aural picture of their experiences.  

The result is two amazing podcasts. We could hear how they had thrived at Wakehurst, working in different areas of the organisation – from marketing, education, and horticulture to the Millennium Seed Bank and the Visitor Centre. (It’s something I’d have loved to have the opportunity to do when I was younger!)

“You’ll definitely enjoy this experience if you’re interested in conserving nature and protecting the planet, because it makes you feel that you’re actually making a difference.”

“My top tips for the next person doing the Horticulture Department would be – just be prepared. You will not want to leave. At least I have not been wanting to leave. And I really want to come back here and volunteer and possibly get a job later on.”

So grab a coffee and listen to the brilliant work of these young people. 


👋 If you’re interested in us augmenting your organisation’s work placements with a Make (Good) Trouble workshop, let us know!

🌳 Wakehurst work placements are open to young people aged 14-18. Contact wakehurstworkexperience@kew.org for information on how to apply.