Given that children from the lowest income group start school with language skills 19 months behind their wealthier peers on average, it is not surprising that oration committee calls for oration to be prioritized as the fourth “R” alongside reading, writing and arithmetic.

But for public speaking education to work at scale, government needs to put evidence and impact at the heart of its implementation, drawing insights from the experience of organizations that have pushed public speaking onto the national agenda.

Despite evidence of its benefits, oration has suffered from a lack of consensus about what it is, what it means, and how it can be delivered. The commission’s work fills in these gaps by providing a common definition of any word, a picture of what good looks like, and a plan for how it might be implemented.

But what does well-done oration look like and can it be delivered at scale?

At Impetus, we find, build and fund organizations that deliver the best-proven interventions to support young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The interventions of any were finder to add 6 months of additional academic progress over the course of a year, while the students with higher language skills are more likely to get crucial GCSEs in English and maths.

This is why, for the past five years, we have supported the national speech charity, Voice 21.

Through our partnership, we have provided them with long-term, unrestricted funding for sustainable growth, complemented by hands-on and intensive support from our team. With Voice 21, I’ve been there every step of the way: refining their theory of change, helping shape organizational strategy, and being an essential friend and partner.

Voice 21 Vocabulary of expression The project assessed the impact of a rich oratory approach on vocabulary development by tracking pupils’ reading progress in 12 schools in England.

At the start of the project, only 19 percent of students scored above average in reading. After the implementation of the oratory interventions, this figure increased to 28% – five points above the national average.

Government must move beyond a surface-level understanding of what works

After more than 20 years of working directly with organizations to increase their impact, we know that achieving lasting change is not easy. As the government considers how to turn rhetoric from policy to practice, it should take lessons from schools and organizations that are already doing it well.

The first step is establishing what “good” looks like, which provides a framework for wider implementation. Voice 21 oration marks are used to accredit their “Centres of Excellence”, with 44 schools accredited to date.

The next step toward national rollout is to promote evidence-based oratory approaches that can be scaled. This is one of the OEC’s recommendations and a key aspect of expanding Voice 21’s public affairs function.

Of course, what works for one organization cannot always be perfectly replicated nationally.

As one of the founding partners of the National Tutoring Programme, I have seen its success undermined by a focus on mainstream coverage rather than mainstream impact. Reaching as many people as possible is a noble and sensible goal, but we believe that the deeper and more meaningful the impact, the better.

While working with Magic Breakfast from 2015 to 2021, I supported them to win a government tender for what became the National School Breakfast Programme, supporting breakfast provision in 1,770 schools across England.

The fact that the program reached approximately 375,000 children per day is proof that it is possible to carry out impactful interventions at the national level. But the recent focus on breakfast alone neglects the learning support element of the program that has made it such a success.

To implement an intervention well and with impact, government must go beyond a surface-level understanding of what works.

Earlier this year, learning from our work with Voice 21, we appointed for the new government to “build the necessary infrastructure for oratory education for all”. With their plan for a national oratory right, the oratory commission took the first step. But as we return to implementation, we would urge the government to learn from our experiences.

Against the backdrop of a tight fiscal environment, with an Autumn Statement full of tough decisions aimed at plugging a £40bn ‘fiscal black hole’, orability seems a rarity: a low-cost, high-impact intervention with potential to deliver transformative change for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

What remains to be done is to ensure that it is not all talk and no action.