Speaking Up about Conflict: An Oracy Intervention

By Nadia Ward, Leader of Oracy at Eltham Hill School

Nadia Ward is an Australian teacher who has lived and worked in England since 2009. She has been a Literacy Lead for multiple schools across the South East since 2012, and is the current leader of oracy for Eltham Hill School.

Oracy: the new buzz word in education. As oracy lead for a comprehensive school in Greenwich, the benefits of oracy to our students are not lost on me – improved self-expression and confidence, increased vocabulary and fluency, and, dare I say it, a chance to avoid a sea of blank stares when engaging in whole class discussions. But when I first started my journey at Eltham Hill School, I was convinced that there was an untapped resource in the goal of achieving outstanding oracy provision. Everyone knows the importance of a debate club for extracurricular opportunities, and no one would deny the power of effective classroom strategies, but what about the pastoral programme? Were we making best use of 30 minutes each day where the students were a captive audience, with a teacher who could deliver a curriculum that goes beyond GCSEs.

This, and a successful application in 2023 to join the ESU Action Research Project saw the birth of the Conflict Resolution Programme; a 14-week journey for the year 7 cohort to learn the origins of conflict, how to identify it, and how to resolve it in our own lives. The premise was simple – no reading and writing tasks: each task had to be oracy-based. And it would culminate in students presenting their views on how to resolve conflict in speeches which they presented to their form groups.

Background context:

Eltham Hill School is a state comprehensive in the London Borough of Royal Greenwich. There are approximately 1350 students on roll, and while years 7-11 is single entry for girls, the Sixth Form is mixed. There has been a school on the site since 1908, and it has been a girls’ school since its inception.

Our students’ results at grades 9-7 and grades 9-5 are above national average, we have a strong Equalities Policy and hold the Gold Equaliteach Award, a nationally recognised organisation that audits the work done by schools to promote equality. The school is committed to creating a culture where the whole community is valued, involved, supported and feels safe from discrimination. For this reason, the school makes the pastoral programme a key focus in delivering sessions that will support the promotion of equality.

The school wanted to begin using the pastoral programme to drive the use of oracy skills in 2022, and a programme called “Dive Into Discourse” was delivered for six weeks in the Summer term to year 7-10. It was a six-week programme that used games to develop students’ oracy skills. Both teachers and students were surveyed about the programme after its conclusion as part of the annual oracy survey. Staff said that 83% of their form ‘enjoyed’ or ‘really enjoyed’ the programme. When asked if it had helped students develop their oracy skills, all staff said it helped their students improve their oracy skills, with 15% saying it helped “a lot”. When students were asked to rate the enjoyment of 55% said they enjoyed it. When asked if it helped improve their oracy skills, 45% said it had. This revealed to us that while staff could see an impact on the oracy skills of the students, they could not see it themselves. It was decided that moving forward, programmes would address certain topics that would be specifically beneficial to each year group and their needs.

The Conflict Resolution Programme:

Tutor groups completed the 14-week oracy-based conflict resolution programme in year 7 tutor time across the Summer term of 2024. The goal was to accelerate the development of oracy skills across all year 7 students and support oracy skills teaching for their tutors, with a view to finding out whether the tutorial programme was a successful method of upskilling both staff and students. Each session was 30 minutes long and students were introduced to a new element of conflict resolution each week: these included ‘The Brain Chemistry of Conflict’, ‘How Conflict Escalates’, and ‘Understanding Positions, Interests, Needs’. This would be followed by oracy-based activities that they would complete in relation to this new knowledge. Tasks included Think-Pair-Share, ABC Group Discussions (Agree, Build, or Challenge the ideas and points made by others), and Building Triplets (students worked in groups of three and were assigned a number between 1-3. Students review the content of the session but have to add additional facts as they review what the previous person has said). The programme also used the Four Strands of Oracy by Oracy Cambridge and Voice 21 as a framework to develop specific skills during each task.

Was it successful?

We completed an end-of-programme questionnaire, with the following results:

• 5% of students said they had a better understanding of why people get into conflict;
• 5% of students said they had a better understanding of why something happens to someone physically and mentally during conflict;
• 3% of students said they felt they had strategies they could use to handle conflict;
• 8% of students said they felt they had strategies they could use to handle online conflict;
• 5% of students said they were better at resolving conflict than they were at the beginning of the programme.

We concluded based on the evidence that the Conflict Resolution Programme did achieve both of its primary goals; improving the oracy skills of both students and teachers, along with improving their ability to resolve conflict.

As a result, the school has delivered the Conflict Resolution Programme to the year 7 cohort each year since, continuing to make adaptations to make it even better. The most effective strategies used by tutors were also incorporated into training sessions for the programme in subsequent years.

This also led to bespoke oracy based pastoral programmes to other year groups in consultation with the heads of year and student voice panels to see which topics were best suited for each year group, including a Model UN with the year 12 cohort. This allowed the school’s pastoral programme to offer oracy skills development for both staff and students and sessions that allowed students to use all four strands of oracy.

Want to know more about conflict resolution in schools? Check out the amazing work being done by CRESST, an organisation that works directly with schools on conflict resolution training and has some excellent resources: https://www.cresst.org.uk.

Our work is inspired by Oracy Cambridge and Voice 21, with a specific focus on their Four Strands of Oracy as a means of delivering and assessing oracy provision in schools.

Voice 21: voice21.org

Oracy Cambridge: oracycambridge.org

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